Irish-born Labor MPs in battle to save seats in Australian election

If the Irish Labor candidates don’t retain their seats in the forthcoming Australian election, then Labor is very unlikely to retain power.

Wicklow-born Ursula Stephens, a senator for New South Wales, is in a battle with the Greens to retain her seat in the upper house, where arcane preference-swap deals complicate matters.

Last November Stephens travelled with the parliamentary Friends of Ireland group to Dublin, Belfast and Drogheda.

"It was just after Jill Meagher had been killed and I took a letter from [then prime minister] Julia Gillard to the people of Drogheda and presented that letter to the mayor," she told The Irish Times. "It really reflected the outpouring of outrage and grief in Melbourne when Jill Meagher was killed."

Stephens also took her fellow parliamentarians to her home town. “I dragged them all to the house, showed them where I lived and where I went to school at the Dominican Convent and we went in and said hello.”

According to the polls, Victorian voters have turned against Labor since Gillard (her seat is in Victoria) was deposed as party leader and prime minister by Kevin Rudd in June.

This is bad news for Belfast- born Laura Smyth, who will find it hard to retain her Victorian seat of La Trobe, where a swing of just 1.7 per cent will see her out after only one term.

Fellow Victorian David Feeney, whose father is from Belfast, is likely to retain the safe Labor seat of Batman though.

Minister for employment Brendan O’Connor, who was raised in Tralee before moving to Melbourne as a teenager, will probably also retain his seat, but Deborah O’Neill, another MP with Tralee connections, will have a tougher time.

O'Neill is a former Sydney Rose of Tralee, whose parents were born in Cork and Kilkenny. "My Irish history and being the daughter of Irish immigrants made me aware of how lucky we are in Australia. Active participation in democracy is a responsibility for all citizens. I do not subscribe to the Liberal Party philosophy that to those who have most, more will be given," she said.

The Catholic vote is still very important to the Labor Party. Catholicism is Australia’s biggest religion, at 27 per cent, but this varies from 44.5 per cent of the population in the Sydney seat of McMahon to 12.7 per cent in the South Australian seat of Mayo.

In the 2010 election, Labor won eight of the 10 most Catholic electorates. Of the 75 most Catholic electorates in the 150- seat lower house, Labor holds 46, the Liberal-National Coalition 28 and one is Independent. Labor holds just 17 of the 50 least Catholic electorates.

If, as is widely expected, the coalition wins on September 7th, Pope Francis will not be the only Jesuit to gain power this year. Liberal leader Tony Abbott was Jesuit-educated in Sydney (and once trained for the priesthood), and a fifth of his likely cabinet are also the product of Jesuit schools.

The National Party’s Barnaby Joyce, like Abbott, attended St Ignatius’s College. So strong is the Jesuit influence in the Liberal Party that Henry Gallagher, a final year student at St Ignatius’s, has urged more compassion for asylum seekers from Abbott and his colleagues.

“Remember where you came from,” Gallagher said. “We think it’s important to remind Tony Abbott, as a very outspoken Catholic, that he should take Jesuit ideals into account in his decisions.”

Labor’s only Jesuit-educated senior politician, Bill Shorten, is likely to become party leader if it loses the election.