The Diverse Face of Bradfield: the 2016 Census

People who do not know Bradfield well sometimes claim that it is a privileged Anglo-Saxon enclave on the leafy North Shore.

When she was Prime Minister Julia Gillard made this kind of attack, saying that the North Shore was not the real world.

It is a highly inaccurate stereotype.  Bradfield is a very diverse electorate – and recently released data from the 2016 Census confirms this.

The census form allows people to self-nominate their ancestry.

Almost 20 per cent of those living in Bradfield reported Chinese ancestry; 3.9 per cent reported Indian ancestry; and 3.5 per cent Korean.

These figures are up noticeably on those from the 2011 census, with one reason being a change in the electorate’s borders between 2011 and 2016 – Bradfield lost parts of Normanhurst and Thornleigh, and picked up a significant part of Chatswood, an area very popular with Australians of Chinese background.

Certainly those reporting Australian or British ancestry make up the largest group, at almost 70 per cent.  But of the 150 electorates around the country, Bradfield ranks 122ndin the proportion of residents with Australian ancestry, and 110th in the proportion with British ancestry.  So the perception of Bradfield as more Anglo-Saxon than the average turns out to be exactly wrong.

Bradfield ranks sixth highest of all the electorates in Australia for people of Chinese ancestry, and third highest for people of Korean background.

The data from the 2016 Census highlights that Bradfield is an area of rich ethnic and cultural diversity – reflecting the multicultural nature of today’s Australian society.