Once upon a time, things were good and you didn’t have to talk about immigration. Those golden days are over.

NSW Labor, now 12 months into its government, must be biting their nails. Surely the idea of calling their federal counterparts and asking lower immigration has passed through the minds of Mookhey, Minns, or Jackson just once… Especially when contemplating the slow-moving car crash that is the Sydney housing crisis.

Even federal Labor have seen the writing on the wall and realised that immigration is extremely unpopular with most Australians. This year, following the record influx of 737,000 migrants in 2023, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese finally acted, releasing a string of changes to the student visa system, and announced a plan to cut back immigration to pre-Covid levels.

This won’t happen until after the next election, of course, and even then the pre-Covid benchmark is still an astonishingly high number of 270,000 net intake, or roughly 1 per cent of the population each year. One of the highest in the world.

But beggars can’t be choosers, and an admission that immigration is hurting Australians is the first step to real reform.

Nevertheless, in New South Wales – ground-zero for the effects of immigration – Premier Chris Minns has said plenty about housing but refuses to acknowledge why there’s such a need for these houses.

‘We’re supportive of the Commonwealth government’s decision to lift immigration into New South Wales, notwithstanding the fact that we’ll take, not the majority but the greatest number of inbound immigrants,’ he told the ABC late last year.

In a comical example of recognising the two problems without connecting them, Minns later went on to announce that NSW will not meet federal Labor’s housing target.

Just a few months later, it was revealed how bad the housing target shortfall was going to be: only 8 per cent of Labor’s proposed homes are to be built – or only 11,400 of the required 138,000 homes.

It was a complete failure that was best captured by a Pedestrian TV headline: NSW Will Miss Its Housing Construction Target By 90 per cent And If I Failed That Badly I’d Be Fired.

Indeed with hundreds of thousands of people pouring in, it’s obvious that without a major immigration policy change, Saudi Arabia’s levels of development, or an asteroid from above, Minns may still face that very fate.

This massive housing shortfall comes even despite the planned obliteration of golf courses, the knocking down and rebuilding of high-density apartment blocks around train stations, and even rezoning the entirety of the Inner-West to accommodate six-storey developments, turning it into an expensive developer favela.

Such is Minns’ desperation that he’s even had to directly appeal to the 13,000 members of Rosehill Race Course to allow the government to demolish the park and replace it with skyrises.

It looks desperate because that’s exactly what it is.

Minns must know what’s coming. A Guardian Essential poll late last year showed the true extent of people’s feelings on immigration and housing.

It revealed that 68 per cent of respondents want to further restrict foreign investment in property, and 59 per cent want to cap immigration until house prices come down.

Scariest of all, even a majority of Labor voters were in favour of capping immigration until the housing crisis gets solved, at 53 per cent. Compare this with recent data showing that only 43 per cent of respondents support Minns’ higher density housing push.

When it comes to housing, it’s clear the voters want to further reduce immigration rather than create more supply.

But worse still for Minns and any future government, take a dive into the data weeds and you realise that this political problem is about to get much worse.

A recent poll reported by the Australian Financial Review showed that immigration ranked only 10th out of voters’ concerns. It’s hardly a surprise; immigrants drip-feeding in over time don’t really have a direct impact on people’s day-to-day lives in the same way high energy prices or worsening crime might do.

But it does have an impact on people’s lives in indirect terms, and Australians are starting to cotton on to this increasingly noticeable trend.

Of the top five issues in voters’ concerns – cost and standard of living, housing and accommodation, health and social care, managing the economy, crime and social order – immigration played a big role in each.

For example, the cost of living – far and away the biggest voter concern – is largely being driven by exploding housing and rental costs. Even the ABS blames Australia’s stubbornly high inflation on housing’s ‘strong demand and low vacancy rates’.

More than that, immigration has repeatedly been proven to worsen inflation by boosting consumer spending, a problem confirmed by an increasing chorus of RBA Governors and economists.

Great.

Then there’s housing. How immigration affects housing is obvious: it’s supply and demand, stupid. In fact, even the government out and out admitted this in a substantial report released last year.

‘Population increases in Australia are driving demand for housing, other services, and infrastructure … international students have also had an impact on the private rental market, predominantly in major cities,’ the report by the AEIH stated.

Recent headlines haven’t helped sentiment towards immigration. Stories of ambulance ramping, worsening GP wait times, and poor medical care are worrying older generations. A fragile economy is being made worse by extremely low growth and the third quarter in a row of GDP per capita recession.

‘It’s official – things are crook,’ is how Terry McCrann put it.

Separate from this is immigration as a social issue. A flood of stories of the fiasco of the released foreign criminals further lowered trust in the institutions designed to keep us safe. Middle Eastern-dominated gang warfare is once again exploding on Sydney streets and innocent people are being caught in the crossfire. In Brisbane, an African crime gang problem was brought to light in a horrific manner when a 70-year-old grandmother was allegedly stabbed to death in a failed robbery. 

And it’s not just in the headlines. Talk to anyone on the street and they will share stories that should scare the political class. From increased crime in their area, to traffic and transport issues, to culture clashes and feelings of isolation, and a broader sense that things getting worse. Add onto that weekly Palestine protests shutting down entire cities, and the mood toward multiculturalism and mass migration in Australia is souring.

Ripples of discontent are beginning to be felt.

One such minor ripple was the announcement that former UAP leader Craig Kelly joined Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, professing to be a champion against immigration.

Kelly is best known for his role in the ‘freedom’ movement and wider social media following, but if past performance is any indicator of future success, this move will struggle to have any meaningful effect on immigration reform.

As one member told me, ‘It’s hard to see how the party that nearly saw its leader get thrown out by voters grab enough support to seriously shift the dial on immigration.’

It’s possible, but they ‘need to hit the right tone’ to capture the sentiment.

With Kelly now aged 60, party leader Pauline Hanson aged 69, many One Nation supporters are questioning the future prospects of the party in its current form, as well as its ability to properly capitalise on growing voter discontent.

What, then, about the Big Dogs? Is there any hope there?

The Liberal Party has been dragged, kicking and screaming, to talk about immigration, and finally, they’ve done it. They say that immigration is too high, but won’t say what they’ll cut it to. Their message doesn’t really have any consistency.

In NSW people like Upper House Member Chris Rath have seen the writing on the wall about the housing crisis, but like Labor, see it only as a housing supply problem. Mark Speakman, the leader of the party has even once suggested we need more migrants to fight a future war.

Australians are once again left sitting, waiting, wishing for a Liberal Party that makes sense.

As for Labor, while they may have won a few Western Sydney seats last election, by actively impoverishing these ‘battler’ regions with lower GDP per capita, stagnant wages, higher house prices – and while also worsening their quality of life with defective apartments, horrendous congestion, and rapidly disintegrating cultural relations, frustration is set to explode into outright anger. Extrapolate this dynamic across Australia, and a ripple about to turn into a tidal wave.

There is an almighty economic and housing catastrophe looming. At the same time, Australians are losing trust in the institutions and losing their belief in multiculturalism. All parties and public departments seem utterly incapable of fixing this. The conditions for a serious social and political flashpoint are starting to emerge.

All because nobody wanted to have a hard conversation about immigration.

Where will it go? At the end of the film Network (1973), a media tycoon tells our protagonist his vision of the coming world: ‘All men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquillised, all boredom amused.’

Australia’s future is certainly a little different: all future elections will be dictated by immigration. All peoples’ lives will be changed by immigration. All problems will be solved, and worsened by immigration.

The future of Australia, either directly or indirectly, will be defined by how it solves the problem of immigration.

Jordan Knight runs Migration Watch Australia, a campaign group aimed at lowering immigration for more affordable housing.

Read more at: queenslandia.substack.com

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