Australia is awash with immigration rhetoric, but little of it is grounded in evidence, clear definitions or serious policy alternatives. Rather than an informed public debate, Australians are being offered slogans, blame and ambiguity.

A repost from 4 December 2025

Anyone who looks at the Australian media would be told that there is an immigration debate occurring.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a debate on immigration. It is undoubtedly an effective way to ensure that Australian immigration policy remains robust and well targeted towards Australia’s needs. Immigration numbers need to be moved both upwards, and downwards, from time to time. Policy settings need to be constantly adjusted.

But in practice there is no real immigration debate.

A worthwhile debate would be based on competing rational propositions and arguments, grounded on sound data and analysis. That is not what’s happening. What we are actually seeing is the blaming of migrants for both real and imagined problems in the community (housing shortages, cost of living, congestion and sometimes just looking different), devoid of any evidence or serious alternative propositions. This is accompanied by political opportunism and rhetoric to capitalise on grievance. It is also fertile ground for those with racist motivations.

The anti-immigration rhetoric we are hearing has a strong familiarity with the noise coming from Donald Trump’s America. We are told by some right-wing politicians that Australia is being overwhelmed by “mass migration.” Of course, it’s just a throwaway line, because no actual numerical meaning is given to either “mass migration,” a medium level of migration or indeed a small level of migration and no alternative optimum migration number is proposed.

Similarly, the Opposition has chosen to label the Labor government as promoting a “Big Australia” – whatever that means. Once more there is no definition of what........

© Pearls and Irritations