Amid the rise of One Nation and the dramatic transformation of the landscape of Australian federal politics, the issue of migration has emerged as a lightning rod in both the polls and social media discourse.
The Albanese government appears to have increasingly sensed the urgency and engaged in a traditional media and social media campaign to assert that migration is under control and working for Australians.
On Sunday, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke conducted an interview during which he stated:
“We’ve already got (immigration numbers) down 45 per cent from where they were, and as the budget papers make clear, we continue to get them lower”.
An examination of ABS data on net overseas migration relative to the Albanese government’s previous budget papers reveals how wrong some of the previous estimates were.
In the Albanese government’s first budget in October 2022, it estimated that migration would gradually return to something akin to the pre-pandemic normal, hitting 184,000 in 2021-22, then 235,000 in 2022-23 and 2023-24.
In reality, across these three financial years, net migration came in over 550,000 people higher than their estimates.
Meanwhile, the Labor MP for Peter Dutton’s old seat of Dickson, Ali France, recently posted on Facebook that:
“Facts you might not want to hear – net overseas migration has fallen by 45% since Labor was elected.”
So has migration fallen by 45% since Labor was elected?
The Albanese government came to power in May 2022 and ABS data shows that rolling 12-month net overseas migration in the June quarter of 2022 was 207,900.
As of the latest available data, which covers the period up to the end of the September quarter of 2025, the intake was 311,000.
Therefore, since the quarter the Albanese government was first elected, net overseas migration has risen by 49.6% on a rolling 12-month basis.
What is true is that net overseas migration has dropped by 44.1% since it hit its all-time high in the September quarter of 2023.
But that isn’t what France’s social media post says; it states, “net overseas migration has fallen 45% since Labor was elected”.
When the fact that migration has risen significantly since the Albanese government was elected in May 2022 was pointed out on social media, pointing out that France’s post was incorrect, it triggered a wave of claims that France was correct and that the figures stated and the link shared to the ABS data were wrong.
As one might imagine in the current climate, some of these posts and messages were less than civil.
The Takeaway
As the government continues to press the narrative that migration levels are perfectly fine and not detrimental, more and more Australians continue to react with disbelief.
This assertion is supported by polling data from RedBridge from earlier in the year, which revealed that more Australians with a view either way believed that One Nation was the best party to handle the rate of immigration than all the rest of the party options combined.
Meanwhile, the claims that no government has been as tough on migration in 30 years and that migration has fallen by 45% since the government was elected continue to propagate.
This is pitting more and more Australians against each other, as one subset of people armed with the facts and reality face off against another with what they believe are facts provided to them by their chosen side of politics.
Once upon a time many Australians looked across the Pacific at the ideological division of the United States, thinking that could never be us.
Now we too often live in an Australia of “alternative realities”, where the challenges faced by some of the most vulnerable among us are overlooked and explained away with spurious reasoning in the name of political allegiance.
