Where the Malaysian community lives in Melbourne

Box Hill has the largest Malaysian community: 6.4% of residents were born in Malaysia. Melbourne and Glen Waverley follow. These 15 suburbs came from a field of 200 eligible Melbourne suburbs. In Melbourne suburbs of 2,000+ residents, 1.3% of people were born in Malaysia (2021 Census).

Suburbs are ordered by the share of residents who were born in Malaysia. The census publishes no Malaysian ancestry category, so country of birth is the only published signal. Only suburbs with at least 2,000 residents are included, and percentile ranks are computed within Melbourne's pool, so the list reflects concentration relative to other metro suburbs.

Malaysia-born residents in Australia are largely Malaysian Chinese, alongside Malay and Malaysian Indian communities, so no single language stands in for the group — their speakers are counted on the Mandarin, Cantonese and Tamil lists instead. Other community pages show two or three census angles side by side, but the ABS publishes a fixed list of ancestries, birthplaces and languages, and they do not cover every community equally. We show the figures that exist rather than filling the gaps with a zero, which would read as an absence of people instead of an absence of a question.

The figures are from the 2021 Census, the most recent available until results from the August 2026 Census are released in 2027. The top 15 is recomputed whenever we refresh the census data.