High Commissioner Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri congratulates Bisma Asif on election to Queensland Parliament
Canberra: Pakistani High Commissioner to Australia Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri this week congratulated Bisma Asif on her election to Queensland Parliament.
“Congratulations to Bisma Asif on her election to Queensland Parliament. As a proud Pakistani-Australian her achievement highlights the strength in diversity & power of representation. Wishing her every success as she paves the way for future generations,” the envoy posted on X.
Bisma Asif is fluent in Hindi, Urdu and English in addition to her native tongue, Punjabi, because the Labor candidate for the northern Brisbane seat of Sandgate used all four languages door-knocking her way to become the first Muslim elected to Queensland parliament last Saturday.
The 28-year-old, who was born in Lahore, says that multilingualism gave her an edge in connecting with voters in her adopted home of Brisbane’s northern bayside suburbs.
“Being able to speak to some of the voters in their own language – I definitely saw a shift in how they reacted,” Asif says.
For families of recent immigrants, the presence of a young, brown, overseas-born woman on the hustings offered a glimpse of what, she says, the future might hold for their own.
“Ultimately, anything anyone wants is for their children to have a better life than they did,” Asif says. “And I think that is what a lot of people saw when I came to their door.”
Asif’s story belongs to that timeless tradition of a family overcoming adversity to enjoy hard-earned opportunities in a new land. When she arrived in Australia at the age of eight, Asif didn’t speak the language she would later use to ask most of her Sandgate constituents to vote for her: English.
Asif is part of Labor’s factional right and a member of the Australian Workers’ Union and Transport Workers’ Union. She was a Young Labor president. While her father works for Queensland Rail, it was a ritual morning cold brew, her Toyota Corolla and her own two feet that powered Asif around her bayside electorate over recent months.
Some of Sandgate’s constituents would have seen themselves reflected in Asif not through language, skin colour or culture, but age. Asif and her husband, Mitchell, moved to Sandgate after getting married about three years ago and searching for a place they could afford to settle down in – and one day, she says, to raise a family in.
“We are incredibly representative of parts of Sandgate where there are a lot of young families moving in, a lot of young couples with children or couples like us, planning to have children.”
