Two weeks ago, former NSW Premier Kristina Keneally officially announced that she will nominate herself to be Labor’s candidate for the seat of Fowler in Sydney’s south west at the next federal election. Her announcement effectively ended the political ambitions of a young Vietnamese-Australian lawyer named Tú Lê from Fairfield, who was campaigning to be Labor’s pick for the seat. The news that Kristina Keneally will be Labor’s candidate to represent the people of Cabramatta, Fairfield and Liverpool, has been received with much backlash, not only from young Vietnamese-Australians but also from fellow Australians with culturally and linguistically marginalised backgrounds. A petition calling for Kristina Keneally to stand aside, organised by grassroots racial justice organisation Democracy in Colour, has already gathered thousands of signatures.

Before I continue, I’d like to clarify that I have no blood relation to anyone else bearing the surname Lê mentioned in this article. Us Lê’s happen to share one of the most common Vietnamese surnames, just like there are more than 200,000 Smith’s in Australia. Under a white gaze, it can be easy to mistake a Lê for a Lee or a Li or even a Ly, but part of our growing pains as one of the most multicultural countries on Earth is to embrace the cultural nuances and complexities that come with having Australians who identify with more than 270 ancestries. As a second-generation Vietnamese-Australian from Western Sydney, I felt the same way Tú felt when she heard the news of her political aspirations being crushed by those within her own Party; disappointed and disheartened. What I did not feel, however, was any surprise.