Pauline Hanson told Parliament in 1996 that Asians were swamping the country. Thirty years on, One Nation is polling above a fifth of the vote, and Labor and the Liberals are falling over each other to out-Hanson her.
Victorians vote on 28 November, New South Wales in March, and the federal election follows in May 2028. For Indian Australians, a community approaching a million, that is a lot of ballot papers with one question attached: do we help keep the country we chose in one piece, or watch it come apart?
Trouble is coming from two sides. One Nation has spent thirty years dividing Australians by race. Labor and the Liberals, meanwhile, are running an auction, each bidding to show it will cut migration harder than the other.
Someone has to be blamed
Australians are rattled, and rattled people look for someone to blame. Prices are up, rents are still rising, and if you don’t own a place you’ve seen no relief at all.
The convenient culprit is the immigrant. We take the jobs. Or we’re on the dole, the weakest argument going, given that most temporary visa holders can’t claim most welfare. And we’re why the trains are full, the schools crowded and the hospital waiting lists long.
None of that survives a look at who’s been running things. Governments of both colours spent years not building enough homes, hospitals or public transport. Pollsters running focus groups say voters bring up mortgages, rent, power bills and doctor waits, and immigration rarely comes up. Even among One Nation voters, apparently only 28 per cent call it their number one issue. Blaming us is easier than blaming the people in charge.
How the bidding is going – Australia migration politics
Labor, nervous about One Nation, has told most new international students they can’t bring family along, with exceptions for PhD students and those from ASEAN and Pacific countries. It wants net overseas migration down to 245,000 this financial year and 225,000 the next. Angus Taylor has promised an even deeper cut, reportedly to 100,000 in his first year, tied to housing.
One Nation says its plan is about numbers, not race. Judge it by what it says and does. Hanson’s Press Club speech attacked multiculturalism itself, not just the intake. Its plan would cut the temporary migrant population by 750,000 over three years, international students first, which is the very pathway many of us took. And its 130,000 cap is softer than it sounds: one of its MPs said it sits alongside at least 100,000 more people on rotating work programs, a claim Hanson publicly disputed. If he’s right, that means fewer of us allowed to settle and more people brought in to work and sent home. To my mind, that is racism dressed up as arithmetic.
Behind every one of those numbers is somebody. Think of a young accountant from Pune who comes to study, waits tables on weekends, graduates, and lands a job at a firm that couldn’t find a local. Ten years on she’s a citizen, paying tax and coaching her daughter’s netball team. The auction sees a number to be brought down.
The Liberal question
Some of us have always felt at home with the Liberals: small business, owning a home, looking after the family. Fair enough. But look at Farrer. The Liberals put One Nation ahead of an independent on their how-to-vote cards, One Nation won, and one analyst reckons those preferences decided it. The Victorian Liberals did the same in Nepean. Their leader, Jess Wilson, has ruled out an alliance with One Nation but hasn’t said where her preferences will go in November.
In a preferential system your second and third choices count as much as your first, so a Liberal vote can end up helping One Nation along. That doesn’t make Liberal voters racist. It does mean you should ask every candidate where your preferences are going, and number every box yourself.
Labor gets no free pass. It turns up at our festivals and temples, then tightens the screws on students and families. We don’t vote as a bloc and we shouldn’t. Ask all of them for policy, not photo ops.
Speak up
Voting isn’t enough. Nobody respects a community that stays quiet, and the demonising won’t stop because we’re polite. We should be on talkback and in the letters pages, at candidate forums, in our MPs’ offices and on social media. Tell our story: the doctors, nurses, engineers, cab drivers, aged-care workers and shop owners who keep this place running. We’re the law-abiding guys and gals minding our own business while others try to make us the villains.
This isn’t a fight just for the newly arrived. The people shouting about migrants don’t check whether you’ve been here three years or thirty. Nor should we do it alone: Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Pacific Islander and other communities are in the same sights, and the Greeks, Italians and Lebanese were there before us.
Start now. Before 28 November, find out who’s standing in your seat and where each party’s how-to-vote card sends its preferences. Ask the candidates, by email or at a street stall, where they stand on student and family visas. Tell your friends what they say, and tell Indian Link and your local paper. On the day, number every box yourself instead of following a card.
We chose this country, and we’re not going anywhere. It’s time we said so, loud and proud.
Read Also: Barry O’Farrell: ‘Australia without migrants is not Australia’
