Scott Morrison's Facebook curry count for the election campaign currently sits at two. Three if you count the khichdi he made a day before calling the election.
Morrison was celebrating Australia's new trade agreement with India and decided to cook his "dear friend" and Indian PM Nardendra Modi's favourite food.
The posts have drawn flak for being tokenistic, but they've also been viral hits, with some in the Indian community appreciating the cultural nod and wishing "ScoMo" the best for the election.
The PM is not the only one trying to influence the Indian-Australian voter. Politicians across the spectrum are seeing Australia's Indian diaspora as a demographic of growing influence.
People born in India make up the second largest group of migrants to Australia, behind England and ahead of China. The number of Indian-born residents soared from 373,000 in 2011 to 710,000 in 2021.
In the 2022 election, the Liberal and Labor campaigns have made coordinated efforts to appeal to the community by promising millions of dollars for cultural organisations, fielding candidates with Indian heritage, and capitalising on issues important to the community — especially in key western Sydney seats like Greenway and Parramatta, and the Victorian electorate of La Trobe.
Appealing to community
Analysis by advocacy group Allies in Colour has revealed there are more than 100 candidates from diverse backgrounds contesting lower house seats this election. Around a third of those candidates have a background from the Indian subcontinent.
The Liberals mainly have their Indian-origin candidates in electorates like Greenway, Lalor, Chifley, Hotham and Maribyrnong — areas with some of the highest concentrations of India-born voters in NSW and Victoria.
In the safe Labor seat of Chifley, Liberal candidate and Punjabi man Jugandeep Singh has been appealing directly to his community.
"I won't say you should vote for me just because I'm Punjabi, because that's the wrong message for a multicultural Australia," Singh told a crowd of hundreds in his native language.
"I can't ask for your vote just because I'm Punjabi. But I will say whenever you begin something new, you should start by talking it through with your family and you are my family."
Labor and Greens candidates are less targeted, but the parties have focused on positioning candidates with subcontinental ancestry in the multicultural seats of Higgins, La Trobe, Swan and Werriwa.
Finding a political voice
There are a few factors that help explain the political interest in the Indian diaspora, says Dr Sukhmani Khorana from Western Sydney University's Institute for Culture and Society.
"I think politicians are waking up to the fact that there is a sizeable diaspora, especially in marginal seats [with] new and undecided voters," she told the ABC.
She says Australia is also trying to prioritise its relationship with India after the diplomatic fallout with China.
Professor Jakubowicz added that Indians became Australian citizens at a much higher rate compared to other nationalities, and had a large middle class who spoke English on arrival.
Indian Australians were a critical mass at the last election, too, but Dr Khorana says the way they were treated during the pandemic has given the community a louder political voice.
"The fact that there was a travel ban on Indian origin Australians travelling during the height of the Delta pandemic, that caused a furore in the community."
It's an issue Labor's La Trobe candidate Abi Kumar has also used to attack the Liberal Party.
"Unfortunately we have been led by a prime minister ... who told international students to go home when they needed the government's support ... who in May 2021 told Australian citizens stuck in India that [if they came back] it will be punishable by five years jail term or a $66,000 fine ... a prime minister who's goose is cooked, no matter how many curries he cooks," he told a Melbourne crowd.
Kumar spent hundreds of dollars promoting the speech via paid ads on Facebook.
Temple selfies and empty gestures
For many candidates from non-Indian backgrounds, turning up to grocery stores, temples and community events has become a regular part of the campaign.
On April 8, Liberals Dan Tehan, Jason Wood and Sharn Coombes posed in garlands outside a Victorian temple with India's Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal, who was in Australia following the signing of the Australia-India Economic Cooperation Trade Agreement.
On April 20, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg stopped by for a photo-op in Sydney's Little India with fellow candidate Maria Kovacic.
One Facebook critic commented: "Don't forget how the LNP treated India and indian-Australian citizens during Covid!"
Political campaigning group Reclaim the News has also funded a Facebook ad recirculating what are described as "racist" comments made by the Treasurer in 2020. He had been criticising Labor's idea of a "wellbeing budget" in Parliament.
"I was thinking yesterday, as the member for Rankin [opposition treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers] was coming into the chamber fresh from his Ashram deep in the mountains of the Himalayas barefoot in the chamber, robes flowing, incense burning, beads in one hand, wellbeing budget in the other, I thought to myself: 'What yoga position the member for Rankin would assume ... to deliver the first wellbeing budget?'"
At the time, the Hindu Council of Australia described the comments as "brazen, racist and Hindu-phobic".
A video of the comments is being promoted on Facebook with a caption stating "voters of Kooyong are turning their back on Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in their droves ... Why would the Treasurer of Australia insult vast swathes of the population, including Hindu Australians and millions of practitioners of yoga and meditation?"
Leveraging Indian media
In the western Sydney seat of Parramatta, both Labor candidate Andrew Charlton and Liberal Maria Kovacic have rushed to make inroads with the community beyond Facebook posts.
Around 15 per cent of residents in the electorate have Indian ancestry, and the seat is held by Labor with a 3.5 per cent margin.
Both candidates have met with local community and religious leaders, and done interviews with one of the country's leading Indian newspapers, Indian Link.
The newspaper has also been running sponsored Facebook ads in support of Liberals Josh Frydenberg and Greenway's Pradeep Pathi. The seat is held by Labor's Michelle Rowland with a margin of 2.8 per cent.
Facebook pages have also been plugging their favourite candidates. A story about Federal MP Dave Sharma and independent candidate Allegra Spender fighting to keep a popular Indian diner in Sydney open late was posted in more than 20 Indian-Australian pages across the country.
There's also a Facebook fan page called Indian Australians for Jason Wood MP dedicated to the La Trobe member.
Several other community pages have shared sponsored campaign material for candidates like the LNP's candidate for Lilley, Vivian Lobo, Hawke independent Jarrod Bingham, and Lalor's Aijaz Moinuddin.
Dr Khorana says there is likely a group of new citizens who might be persuaded by "curry selfies and turning up at temples ... because they see that as an embrace of their community, and they haven't been here the last 10-20 years to see that that hasn't kind of resulted in anything substantive".
"I think people who've got a longer political memory in Australia are more cynical about these gestures.
"It's just a really superficial understanding of the community, which leads them to the conclusion that donating to a religious or community centre is more important than kind of meeting their everyday life challenges through a meaningful policy, whether it's about health or education, or being able to have their parents here so that they can help with childcare."
Religious funding
Since the start of the campaign, the major parties have collectively promised more than $8 million in funding for Hindu and Sikh temples, cultural centres, and community kitchens, if they're re-elected.
Labor kicked it off in early April with a $700,000 pledge towards a new community kitchen in Melbourne for Sikh Volunteers Australia. The organisation is known for cooking and delivering free meals for vulnerable Australians, and stepping up during natural disasters.
The funding promise was matched last week by the Liberals.
On April 14, Minister for Education and Youth Alan Tudge announced $1.5 million for a Hindu community hub in The Basin in Victoria. Labor followed with the same promise on April 23.
Senior Liberals including the PM, Immigration Minister Alex Hawke and Attorney-General Michaelia Cash have also made various appearances across the Western Australian electorates of Tangney and Cowan, promising $3.5 million for temples and community centres.
Election promises
Sociology professor Andrew Jakubowicz says while the Indian-Australian community is complex and varied, voting trends can be found in sub-communities.
"Punjabi Sikhs tend to be slightly more pro-Labor than the wider Hindu community," he says.
"You [also] have a whole group of Indian professionals, people involved in various forms of business, a very significant group who are directly involved with the health industry, and each of them come to the political environment with a slightly different orientation.
"But there's no doubt in my mind that the Liberal Party in particular has been very closely involved in drawing Indian community leaders and influentials into their sphere of influence and interest."
Liberal candidates like Mr Singh have built their campaigns around a promise to decrease processing times and fees for parent visas — an issue integral to the Indian migrant community.
"I think we'll probably see some public statement, particularly from the Liberal Party on that issue, before the election," says Professor Jakubowicz.
The other hot button issue for the group is the recognition of overseas qualifications.
"There's a lot of concern about the difficulty Indian trained professionals are having finding work in their own area of expertise, primarily because of issues around expectations, local experience, it was very hard."
