A Resolve Political Monitor survey on immigration published earlier this month revealed that nearly two-thirds of Australians believe immigration levels are “too high”:
74% of voters also believed that the federal government has run immigration in an “unplanned and unmanaged way”:
A new poll by Freshwater Strategy for The AFR likewise shows that 61% of Australians believe that current immigration levels are too high:
The government’s rating as a manager of “immigration and asylum” fell by eight points since September to 23%, and it now lags the Coalition, which is on 36%, by 13 points.
Rejection of ‘Big Australia’ immigration is nothing new of course. Countless polls leading up to and following the pandemic have overwhelmingly rejected high levels of immigration. For example:
- Newspoll (2018): 56% want lower immigration;
- Essential (2018): 54% believe Australia’s population is growing too fast and 64% believe immigration is too high;
- Lowy (2018): 54% of people think the total number of migrants coming to Australia each year is too high; and
- Newspoll (2018): 74% of voters support the Turnbull government’s cut of more than 10% to the annual permanent migrant intake to 163,000 last financial year.
- The Australian Population Research Institute (February 2023): 70% of Australians wanted lower levels of immigration (of which 42% wanted significantly lower or zero immigration).
- QandA (August 2023): 65.4% want immigration cut to cope with pressure on housing.
The fact is that Australians have long despised high levels of immigration because they know it degrades their quality of life, ability to purchase or rent a good home, and the natural environment.
This is why, before to last year’s federal election, Labor misled Australians by claiming that it would run a lower immigration government:
Instead, Labor increased immigration to unprecedented levels. It also inked two additional migration pacts with India in order to maintain high levels of immigration indefinitely.
After delivering 450,000 more net migrants than were forecast in the October 2022 federal budget (see below chart), the Albanese government is now trying to claim that it will reduce NOM to a “sustainable” level of 235,000 over the longer term, as projected in the 2023 Intergenerational Report (IGR).
This 235,000 figure is approximately 15,000 more than the 220,000 average NOM reported during the 15 years of ‘Big Australia’ immigration preceding the pandemic:
As a result, Australia’s immigration levels will stay historically high, which Australians oppose.
Australia’s population will balloon to more than 40 million people within 40 years, and housing, infrastructure, the natural environment, and living standards will all be crushed by the never-ending migrant influx.
However, because annual NOM will be ‘cut in half’ from its current absurd level, Labor, the media, and vested interests are labelling it “sustainable.”
The only thing that is “sustainable” in Australia is the ability of politicians and the media to mislead the public about immigration.
