Hi, it's Jacqueline Maley here.

Happy new year.

We're on a little break over summer.

Lucky us.

Before we return at the end of January for another year of Inside Politics.

Today we're returning to an episode recorded in the wake of the divisive March for Australia protests, which became the vehicle for a hodgepodge of causes including immigration, an issue that would lead to Jacinta Nampijinpa Price's sacking from the frontbench of the opposition.

This episode features chief political correspondent Paul Circle and federal political correspondent Natassia Chrysanthos.

Welcome, guys.

Hi, Jack.

Morning.

So, Paul, last weekend we saw these big anti-immigration rallies being held across the country.

They were called the March for Australia rallies.

They made the news, obviously, and there was particularly some violence at the Melbourne rally where we saw neo-Nazis showing up.

And one was even sort of given permission to take the microphone and publicly address the rally in a sort of endorsement, almost, of that particular group.

And this was despite an insistence from the organisers that the rallies were attended by mainstream Australians.

What reaction did we see this week from Canberra?

Yeah, they were big rallies.

I mean, they weren't as violent or as incendiary as the Cronulla riots, but they certainly carried echoes of it in terms of the size and the tenor of some of the debate at these rallies.

In terms of how the reaction played out in Canberra this week, the Prime Minister was particularly keen to strike a measured tone.

He wanted to acknowledge the legitimate concerns of some of the people at the rally.

Do you think there were good people with legitimate concerns at these anti-immigration rallies this weekend?

Of course, there's always good people will turn up to demonstrate their views about particular issues.

But what we have here is neo-Nazis being given a platform.

He didn't want to cast them all as extremists.

He wanted to acknowledge that there has been high migration post Covid after a period of low migration when lockdowns occurred, It, which coincided with a housing crisis, and people feeling like their lot in life was getting worse.

We had an inflation crisis as well, and when those problems are occurring in society, there's a common tendency, as demonstrated through history, to blame other groups in society, including migrants.

So you saw Albanese trying to kind of sit in the middle of this debate.

Sussan Ley tried to set the agenda earlier in the week by saying the Prime Minister needed to show leadership at this time of kind of fraying, fraying of our social fabric.

But the coalition's message got muddied as the week went on, because some of the more forceful right wingers in the party, including Jacinta Price and Alex Antic, used some, at times controversial language to talk about this issue.

Jacinta price draped herself in the Australian flag, which is the garb that many of these protesters were using on Sunday.

Senator McKim, on a point of order.

Yes.

Thank you president.

I asked for a ruling, please, on whether the senator is who's wrapped in, uh, the national flag at the moment is contravening the standing order that prevents props.

Thank you, acting President.

So disappointing from the Greens, but also so typical.

You can wear a kifa in here.

Perhaps you should remove that article from you whenever you walk through these chambers.

For the benefit of all Australians in this country.

Yes.

Snark all you like.

It's revolting.

Alex Antic, the, uh, most far right liberal senator, suggested that the neo-Nazi group led by Thomas Sewell, who we saw, uh, harass Jacinta Allan, the Victorian premier, at a press conference, was effectively in some sort of psyop operation with ASIO.

And they're not a real organisation.

And this is all a government set up to try and create the impression that neo Nazis are a prominent force when actually Anti-migration views are widespread.

So there were some out there comments in the Parliament this week, uh, and worth just very briefly putting it into a bigger context.

We've had the ASIO boss, Mike Burgess, talking for years about the increased risk of politically motivated violence.

At the same time as populist movements are on the rise in the US with Trump and in large parts of Europe.

So all of these extremist elements and these risks we've been hearing a lot about are kind of coalescing and creating this big national conversation around radicalism in Australia.

Yeah, and sort of some elements are hopping off the internet and into real life tasks.

You had a look at immigration figures this week.

So let's just go straight to the facts, because there is this perception, rightly or wrongly, among some sectors of the Australian population, that there are too many migrants, and particularly in our big cities, where you do see a lot of, I think probably temporary migrants and people blame them, perhaps for the housing crisis and also maybe for sort of infrastructure gluts or kind of, you know, jamming up infrastructure.

What are the actual facts on migration figures?

Well, if you look at the last two decades, so since about oh four in the Howard era, you've had a pretty steady approach to migration, where the population is generally grown between 1 and 2% every year.

Um, and since 2004, migrants have contributed more to population growth than natural increase, which refers to the number of people being born minus the number of people who died.

So migrants have made up the kind of majority of population growth for the last 20 years.

Um, the big anomaly, I suppose, as Paul said, happened during Covid.

So we were on track at that.

That kind of steady rate of growth between 1 and 2%.

Then borders were shut.

You had this, this historic dip in, um, migration to negative migration.

And then when borders reopened, you had a historic surge.

Um, now when kind of, uh, people in the protest have and it happens in Parliament as well, bring up this argument that a million people came into the country in two years.

That's true.

Um, but what that doesn't kind of account for was it came off the back of negative migration and actually the budget papers.

So the budget papers forecast migration for the next four years, every year.

Um, and they've gotten all muddled up with all these kind of contradictory expectations, not being able to predict when borders will open or close things like that.

But for example, if you go back to the 2019 budget delivered by the Morrison government, which is the last pre Covid budget, I suppose, and you look at its forecast for population growth and you, which was a kind of steady steady rate and you take that forward.

The population um would have been in 24 in 2024.

Sorry.

It would have been almost 28 million.

What we ended up with was 27.4 million.

So the population levels that we see now are roughly on par with what governments were supposedly planning for five six years ago.

So that's when you get to this kind of argument that that governments have been ushering in this kind of mass migration by stealth.

Um, that doesn't add up when you look at what governments have been planning for, and then you get into a reasonable debate about housing and infrastructure and all of that.

Yeah, yeah.

So basically, Covid kind of really stuffed everything up.

And I think that, um, or stuffed up all the projections.

Okay.

So Paul, let's talk about the political debate around migration, because as you say, it has become sort of globalized.

Both labor and the coalition know that some voters, um, have concerns around there being too much immigration.

And both parties went to the election with promises to cut immigration.

That obviously didn't work so well for the coalition.

But Labor's won government.

Are they going to cut immigration?

Yeah, well Labor's continuing on with their policies that they had before the last election to bring immigration down from those post Covid highs.

Peter Dutton turned this into one of the most salient issues of the last term, not off his own bat.

He picked up on something that was occurring in the community.

I'm interested to ask now, is it right to say that the post Covid numbers did lead to a much higher perception of high immigration and a perception that immigrants were fuelling social issues in Australia?

Or is that a bigger feature of political debate than it has been in polling of individuals?

I think it depends who you are and where you live, right, and what your economic concerns are.

I think research tells us that, that people who are concerned about economic security or housing insecurity are more likely to be concerned about immigration.

Um, you know, you had in this recent period that really intersect with the housing debate, but but in previous times, you know, you've got traffic and congestion issues, and that also turns into a conversation about immigration.

So I think everyone's kind of reality on that front will be different.

But there's no doubt that, um, it the political narrative I think has, has helped to kind of consolidate that argument.

And I think that that housing immigration link there is there there is a relationship there.

But immigration is not the only factor that influences housing.

Housing shortages, housing prices is it's a it's a much more complicated picture.

What I find really interesting is just talking to people in Parliament, including coalition ministers, MPs, post-election, and a lot of them will say people didn't buy it like we were.

We were drawing this simplistic link.

Being like migrants and international students are the reasons you can't buy a house.

And it didn't land with people.

And I think you saw that in the election result.

Um, which is why I find it quite interesting that the coalition, in many ways this week is still kind of giving this conversation a similar framing.

The coalition leadership tried to strike a pretty, um, even tone on this stuff.

But we did see Coalition Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa price makes them particularly sort of controversial comments about the Indian community in particular that she got backlash on.

So you've got kind of Lee, I think, trying to play both sides a little bit, being very kind of much more empathetic, kind of where all migrants.

I'm a migrant, we love the migrant communities, while at the same time kind of weighing into this debate around the housing link, which didn't quite work for the coalition last time.

And then as she's she's really trying to walk that line.

You've got Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who comes on afternoon briefing and after a bit of questioning from the host, basically alleges that labor is bringing in specific groups of migrants so that it can win votes.

So who do you think they're trying to bring in to to make them vote for labor?

Well, those that are more labor leaning that that are likely to be.

But there are right wing or left wing people in every community.

Right.

So who specifically are they?

Now Australia's got a non-discriminatory migration system that that doesn't preference nationality, but price basically contradicts that.

And then when pressed on who is Labour trying to bring in singles out the Indian community?

Well, as we've seen, you know, I mean, you yourself mentioned that there is a concern with the Indian community and only because there's been large numbers and we can see that reflected in the way that the community votes for Labour at the same time.

This is probably worth acknowledging the overwhelming kind of target in terms of anti-immigration sentiment on the weekend.

And you have several really upsetting, um, reports of racism that people experienced on the streets of Sydney and Melbourne and so forth.

And then you have price now, a Liberal senator going on national television and basically validating that concern that that led to significant racism on our streets.

Well, and not just that saying that they're queue jumpers almost.

Yeah, yeah.

And and, um, the laborers vote stacking and.

Yeah, no, no kind of credible allegation, no evidence for it.

There was I think it's safe to say that Lee wasn't happy about that situation.

Our Australian Indian community are amazing.

You contribute as Australian Indians so much to our country.

We know how hard you work, your family values and the contribution you make across this country.

And as Opposition leader, I value that incredibly.

Price had issued a statement about an hour afterwards.

Um, but again, her statement was Australia has a non-discriminatory migration program.

Suggestions otherwise are a mistake.

Uh, there wasn't a kind of a lot of ownership over that mistake.

And no apology to the Indian community.

And no apology.

And then she came out the next day and said, I don't think I need to apologize.

So and the Indian community, it is it is a significant voting block because it's a lot of people, and labor and the coalition both caught that community.

There is a lot of active outreach among Indian Australians, and there are a lot of them are very politically engaged.

Um, so I don't think this bodes well for the coalition and Sussan Ley, as she vows to rebuild the coalition's reputation in multicultural communities that ultimately contributed to its massive defeat.

Okay.

But I just want to look at the overseas context, because we do look overseas and we see that in the UK, in the United States, in Germany, just to name a few countries, there is some fraying of social cohesion that is due to conflict over migration.

I guess you could say, and tensions.

And you have xenophobic protests against asylum seekers in the United Kingdom, for example.

How, Paul, are Australian politicians sort of very concerned or very alive to the possibility that that kind of stuff could be imported here?

Well, I think they definitely are.

Um, and in a number on a number of different fronts in politics.

Now, you see the internet kind of shrinking the world.

Movements that pop up in a in a like minded Western country can very quickly be replicated by people in, in, in another country because they're able to, um, pick up the same tactics and talking points.

And you see that from the US.

You're seeing that now.

Um, some of the UK protests that have occurred in small towns looked a little bit like the ones we saw on the weekend here.

Um, there was a huge, uh, online discussion in Australia about the so-called UK migrant gang rape crisis, which, um, quickly turned into an issue last year because of its prominence on Elon Musk's platform.

And then I saw lots of Australian far right debate just in in the weeks after that.

So you're seeing this, this kind of aping of, um, of events overseas and I think a point, a just a point of difference between us and some of these other countries is what we've we've been able to do in terms of securing our borders over the last 20 years.

John Howard used to talk about keeping control of borders and keeping public kind of acceptance of the migration program alive.

And key to that is stopping the sense that the borders are porous and that small boats are flowing in.

Um, without any control, which feeds a sense of anxiety in the community.

He brought in the Pacific solution.

Labor obviously overturned that had a huge political crisis over it under the Rudd Gillard government's um, reluctantly brought back, uh, a stronger border policy processing.

Yeah.

The Abbott government brought in boat turn back policies.

And now that's an absolute fixture of labor politics, as demonstrated by Tony Burke last week signing another very expensive deal with Nauru.

So we do have a fundamental difference with, for example, the UK, which has a very, very porous border at its at its English Channel crossing.

But we are seeing on the, on the fringes of our society, not quite in the center as it is in other parts of the West, but on the fringes, a growing sense that there are too many migrants in our community.

That certain pockets of, particularly Melbourne and Sydney are starting to not look like Australia, that that white Australians particularly are lower middle class and working class.

White Australians don't have prosperous lives because heavy industries have closed, because the fossil fuel industry is, is, is dying, and that the globalisation that we've seen in the last 30 years has not benefited, uh, some groups of Australians.

And that, you know, we've used high levels of migration to grow our economy instead of trying to find solutions to actually grow productivity.

Yeah.

So that's what I find interesting because as you, you've just taken us through a potted history of the sort of asylum seeker debate, which was a huge issue, like when I was in Canberra, it was a huge political issue, and it's basically settled and it's basically bipartisan now that we have a very strong border protection policy.

But now the debate has actually shifted to completely legal migration, migration that is sanctioned and indeed encouraged by our government to prop up economic growth and to prop up the population.

But I suppose you see a whole cohort of voters who feel like they've never signed on to that, who feel like they've never specifically agreed to having these levels of what, you know, the right wingers call mass immigration, which is not a term that I would use.

But I guess what I'm getting at is whether or not both sides of politics are now labor, because they're in government, have actually done enough to proactively convince or show Australians the benefits of migration to our country in terms of services, in terms of population growth, in terms of economic growth, and, you know, specialized workers that we desperately need.

I kind of I don't know.

And this is a conversation I think I've been having a lot this week, and I think just normal people would be having because it it does touch everyone.

I feel like a lot of Australians do get that.

I think most Australians do get that.

I think most people have, but I think I think it's.

In the center of.

Interesting.

Is it being led by politicians, though, and particularly to the cohort of Australians who feel that there may be getting ripped off by, by, Um, you know, the immigration system as it is.

I wonder when we're talking about that cohort of people.

And I think, like like, you know, recent surveys will tell us, you know, there is a kind of higher level than usual of concern about immigration as a trend in Australia.

Whether that whole group of people are the kind of people who are so motivated by that concern that they'd come out and march.

I don't know.

I think I kind of just like putting it in perspective a bit.

I feel like this cohort is a a group of people.

I think other people have kind of less passionate feelings, perhaps, about the rate of immigration, even if there is a level of underlying discomfort or whatnot.

But I feel like that cohort, probably the ones that, you know, turned up to the rally, I don't feel like they're kind of views on this thing are really being guided by mainstream politicians.

Like it's coming more from, like, the right wing.

Yeah, sure.

And I think a lot of it is as as we say, a lot of it's influenced by internet culture.

But I guess I'm asking about the, the, the political, the onus on politicians to make proactively a case for immigration and its benefits.

Have they failed?

I feel like they like.

And hearing them talk about this week.

Right?

Everyone will be like, everyone's a migrant, migrants have made great contributions to our country, etc., etc.

um, whether it's that that line's not convincing or it feels a bit basic at this point.

Um, whether it's a matter of being more up front when it comes to policy platforms and elections around your forecasts, around immigration, so people feel like they're on the same page.

I feel like they're being informed.

And the government hit its migration numbers for months and just released it quietly this week.

Yeah, I wouldn't I don't think that's quite like that's again, that goes back to the permanence.

I mean, and the reality is that most ordinary voters aren't going to be looking at the migration projections in the budget papers, but I just wonder if there's a little bit of, um, a little bit of reticence on the part of politicians from both sides of politics to admit how much immigration drives economic growth and how much we need and desperately rely upon migrants, in particular in sectors like the aged care industry and in healthcare generally, and even in industries like financial services, where I think it's about a quarter of workers are from overseas.

So yeah, I just wonder if they're a little bit reluctant to to admit that publicly.

I Paul, I want to ask about the neo Nazis that we saw in Melbourne this week, which strangely seems to be, I don't know, a comfortable home for neo Nazis.

The point you just made.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Can I just make one more point on the reluctance?

Um, just before we move on, because there was a good example this week.

So, yeah, I do think there is reluctance because if you're a treasurer and you've just gone through a period of, uh, really damp economic growth, only kept out of recession by by high migration levels, you're effectively admitting that without bringing in a lot of migrants, you have run the economy into the ground.

So we've had we've had we've had uncreative policy making and a lack of bravery in policy making, which has created a productivity problem.

That's been where, where, where a gap has been plugged by migration.

And just this week we saw how crucial.

And you mentioned aged care, jacki, how crucial migrant workers are because the government delayed home care packages and aged care created a bit of a mini crisis in Canberra this week, forcing the government to backtrack and roll out aged care home packages more quickly, and a key reason the government's cited for not being able to care for people in their homes is that we don't have enough workers in Australia willing to do these jobs.

We need more migration to plug these skills gaps for.

So for all the concern about housing, legitimate or not, there's a lot of concern on the other side around skill shortages, which we saw in Covid.

And we still see now in a bunch of key industries.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think, you know, Peter Dutton in particular, when they had their sort of big targets to slash migration that they took to the election never really addressed the difficulty of the fact that the economy basically wasn't going to run, you know, on the levels of migration, that he.

Was totally incoherent policy from Dutton with no solution on how that would work.

Economically.

Yeah.

So let's talk about the neo-Nazis.

As reluctant as I am to give them any airtime.

We did see them surface in Melbourne.

We saw a neo-Nazi leader bail up Jacinta Allan, the Victorian premier, at a press conference in a public place, which was a little bit of a security risk.

How can politicians or how are the politicians at a federal level, responding to this sort of creep of extremism into the mainstream debate that you see.

For example, the Prime Minister grappling with this in his tone and remarks this week, um, this very careful, um, you know, there are good people not we don't want to demonize everyone.

You know, he was pressed on this in the caucus as well, because not all labor MPs were were satisfied, um, with that response, Ed Husic came out a few days later and said, I think something like, show me a good fascist.

Um, the Prime Minister's justification was that it goes, I guess, back to the kind of, um, internet radicalisation theme, um, which is by demonising these people publicly, you could push them into a rabbit hole.

And I think the other big thing that counter-extremism experts will say when it comes to, um, right wing radical groups is and we saw this around Welcome to Country around Anzac Day as well.

They are trying to hijack mainstream debate.

They are making what sounds like rational argument to kind of bring people more into a racist and extremist ideology.

Um, I think you've seen the Prime Minister be very cautious about playing into their hand there.

Um, I think that is what is also probably a bit interesting about the way that the coalition has responded.

Like the coalition, I think where the where the labor government has tried to move on from a legitimate discussion of immigration this week, it's acknowledged it, but it hasn't wanted to engage with it.

You've seen the coalition engage with it more.

Um, you had one nation try and launch a Senate inquiry into immigration.

The coalition then kind of jumped on that and amended it slightly, also trying to call for this debate into immigration.

Where that all started was with these weekend rallies, which we saw were hijacked by neo-Nazi groups.

Um, so I think there is there are different levels of kind of caution around the parliament in terms of how political debate should or should not engage with that kind of extremist element to some of these conversations taking place.

I mean, it is actually really difficult line to walk.

And I think media is grappling with this in the same way, like they are.

They're so in-your-face and so disgusting that it demands attention, but.

They can't not report.

It.

The attention.

It's a phenomenon that exists.

But but yeah, I don't want to talk about neo-Nazis on this podcast ever.

If I had my druthers, I know.

And they have a there's a document from 2021 which Cam Wilson from Crikey reported.

It's from the National Socialist Network.

So the group that Thomas Sowell runs and it's a handbook on, quote, media baiting, and it quotes media baiting is a huge portion of our recruitment drive.

There are currently hundreds of minor nationalist groups in Australia, but none of them ever amount to anything without media attention, even if the articles are mostly negative.

The readers of the article are not the target audience.

We're trying to win over youth who are already sympathetic to the cause and are seeking an outlet for their views.

So inadvertently, we are driving their recruitment.

We're being used as tools.

Yeah.

Alright.

Right now again.

Let's stop talking about neo-Nazis then.

Guys, this has been such an interesting discussion.

I wish we could talk for longer, but we're out of time and I'm sure we'll revisit it.

Task particular thanks to you.

We haven't seen you in a while.

It's a pleasure.

Pleasure to be here.

Thanks.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Bye.

Today's episode was produced by Josh towers with technical assistance from Kai Wong and Debbie Harrington.

Our executive producer is Tammy Mills, and Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.

To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop, follow Inside Politics on Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you listen to your podcasts.

To stay up to date with all the politics, news and exclusives, visit The Age or The Sydney Morning Herald websites and to support our journalism, subscribe to us by visiting The Age or smh.com.au.

I'm Jacqueline Maley, thank you for listening.