Sydney's Christians aren't sold: Churchgoers push back on One Nation's pitch for the pew vote

One Nation is running a deliberate, organised campaign to court Christian voters across Australia — and Sydney's faith communities are talking about it. From Pentecostal megachurches in Blacktown to Catholic parishes in Parramatta, the conversation is the same: the overture is being heard, but the reception is complicated.

The timing is not accidental. With 47 federal seats across NSW and a cluster of culturally conservative, faith-active electorates spread through Western Sydney — Werriwa, Fowler, McMahon — minor parties have long eyed the region as fertile ground. One Nation's push has intensified since the 2025 federal election, when the party polled above expectations in several outer-suburban seats. The strategy appears to centre on shared positions around religious freedom legislation, opposition to gender-inclusive school curricula, and scepticism toward Safe Schools-style programs.

But worshippers contacted by The Daily Sydney this week describe a disconnect between the pitch and the platform. At St Patrick's Cathedral Parish in Parramatta, a Filipino-Australian parishioner who attends Sunday mass weekly said she felt the party's immigration stance was impossible to square with her faith. "We are a church of migrants," she said. "What they say about immigration — I hear it and I think, that is not what the Gospel asks of me." She declined to give her name.

The gap between values and votes

That tension runs deep in communities like Auburn and Lakemba, where large numbers of Christian residents — many from South Sudan, Lebanon, and the Pacific Islands — are active in faith life but vote with an eye on family reunion visa policy, multicultural funding, and community services. One Nation has proposed cutting the permanent migration intake to 70,000 a year, roughly half the current planning level of around 185,000. For congregations built on successive waves of new arrivals, that number lands hard.

Pastors and lay leaders at Hillsong's Norwest Campus in Baulkham Hills and the Blacktown Salvation Army corps have not made public statements, but members speaking informally describe an awareness of the campaign without enthusiasm for it. Several said One Nation's voter outreach materials — circulated through social media channels targeting Christian communities — emphasised religious freedom and family values but did not mention climate policy or housing affordability, issues that many younger churchgoers ranked as their top concerns.

According to the 2021 Census, 43.9 per cent of Greater Western Sydney residents identified as Christian, a proportion well above the national average of 44 per cent overall but concentrated differently — with far higher shares of Catholic and evangelical Protestant communities in suburbs stretching along the Great Western Highway from Parramatta to Penrith. That's a substantial bloc if it moves together. It rarely does.

What faith communities are watching for

The Australian Christian Lobby, which has offices in Canberra and meets regularly with faith leaders across Sydney, has not endorsed One Nation and is unlikely to. ACL's focus heading into any campaign is typically a narrow set of conscience issues — religious schools' employment rights, voluntary assisted dying regulations, and speech protections. Sources familiar with ACL's Sydney engagement say One Nation's broader policy suite, particularly on welfare and Indigenous affairs, creates friction with many of the denomination leaders ACL works alongside.

At the ground level, the question now is whether One Nation's outreach will translate into actual votes or simply generate noise. The party will need to field credible candidates in targeted Western Sydney seats and sustain the campaign through preferences. In the 2022 federal election, One Nation's Senate vote in NSW sat at 4.7 per cent — enough to matter in preference flows but not enough to elect a senator. If the Christian voter push shifts that by even a percentage point or two, it could affect close contests in outer-suburban lower-house seats.

For congregations from Rooty Hill to Rockdale, the practical advice from political observers is straightforward: watch what candidates say at local candidate forums, which typically run through community halls and church venues in the two months before any election is called. Several Catholic and Anglican churches in the Parramatta Diocese have hosted non-partisan voter information nights in past cycles and are expected to do so again. Faith, it turns out, does not vote in a bloc — and One Nation is learning that the hard way.