How a conspiracy theory embraced by Trump became part of mainstream Australian politics

August 12, 2026 — 1:10pm

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Talking about the far-right immigration narrative that’s moving ever further into Australia’s political mainstream is about as much fun as having a colonoscopy but is similarly necessary and urgent.

With One Nation leading federal polls and the Liberal Party’s announcement that it wants to bring migration down to its lowest level since 2009, now is probably the wisest time to peek into the future that they aspire to for Australia, before we wake up in late 2028 to discover there’s a shortage of nurses and we’re all eating government-mandated traditional British food like spotted dick, which is a dessert made with mutton fat that sounds like it’s contracted a venereal disease.

The story that the far-right is telling is a compelling one: the West, and particularly the left, needs to wake up to the threat of invasion by brown and black people, before it leads to the erasure of Anglo-Celtic culture and the extinction of the white race. (I believe I might be part of the invasion vanguard. Still awaiting orders, if so.)

Their story has three distinct acts. There is the problem, which is the threat of immigrant invasion; the cause, widely believed to be an organised conspiracy named the great replacement theory and the solution, known as remigration. While the concept of invasion is familiar, the great replacement theory and the term remigration have only relatively recently entered the........

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