If Hamlet had been a pundit, he might have pondered whether it’s worse to be wrong, or to be disbelieved. With classical Greek sadism, the myth goes that the god Apollo cursed Cassandra to utter true prophecies but forever be ignored. Being wrong stings, but being ignored is the stuff of tragedy.

It’s with this kind of energy that I approach the impending national immigration debate. The Liberal Party has promised it will soon release principles for managing migration. That oppositional politics will turn it into an unproductive and unedifying partisan stoush is predestined. What happens next? Slow-motion tragedy. Unless someone, somewhere, lends Cassandra an ear.

Illustration by Simon LetchCredit:

There are two ways to discuss immigration. In good time, civilly and constructively. Or too late, angrily and hurtfully.

In most of the Western world, the public discussion comes too late. Symbolic of that fact is a 2025 English-language reprint of The Camp of the Saints, the dystopian 1973 vision of immigration run amok by French author Jean Raspail. Cassandras everywhere are not shocked. In fact, it’s been a long, lazy slouch to be reborn.

The book’s fortunes have mirrored the immigration debate itself. On publication, the novel was condemned and rejected by polite society. Since then, it has been spoken about covertly. It resurfaces when unease over migration overflows. The immigration debate is red-hot in Europe and the US; in a small digital world, the embers have spread to Australia.

The novel describes the arrival by boat of wave upon wave of immigrants from poor nations to Europe’s shores, an “invasion” of the world’s poor into rich........

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