Seventy-four years ago an outfit called Australian Public Opinion Polls conducted a Gallup survey about Australians’ attitudes to immigration. The headline in Melbourne’s Herald emphasised the majority who said that “the number of people coming into Australia was either “about right” or “too few.” But a plurality, 41 per cent, reckoned it was “too great.”
Since 2014 (but not every year) the Lowy Institute has posed a similar survey question with an almost identical trio of available responses. Its first instalment painted a reasonably rosy picture, with just 37 per cent saying immigration is too high. But since then attitudes seem to have soured, with 2018 the recording the lowest support, and the latest, 2025, the second-lowest, noticeably less favourable than in 1951.
But what is meant, and understood, by “immigration”? “Coming to Australia” (in the 1951 framing), of course, but from where?
The first post–second world war “populate or perish” boatload arrived in 1947 from, according to the National Museum, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. “They were all young and single and quickly became known as the ‘beautiful Balts.’ As [Labor immigration minister Arthur] Calwell later admitted, ‘It was not hard to sell immigration to the Australian people once the press published photographs of that group.’ ”
Most interesting about that 1951 survey is that APOP asked respondents whether they supported immigration from each of seven European countries. Approval ranged from 77 per cent for the Netherlands to 26 for Italy. The latter’s wooden spoon was no doubt influenced by its membership of the Axis only several years earlier, though Germans managed 51 per cent against Allied Greeks’ 41.
The fairer the better, it seemed. Or, put more politely, we prefer those who look and behave more like us.
Britain was not listed, presumably because their welcome mat was simply assumed. Over the following decades, the United Kingdom and Ireland accounted for easily the biggest numbers, followed by Italy and Greece. There were quite a few Dutch, but not many of those beautiful Balts.
These days, of course, the intake makeup is very different. After an influx in the 1970s and 1980s, Australia currently has the largest cohort of Vietnamese (as a percentage of population) outside Indochina. This century, people from India have been the largest component, followed by China.
After Sunday’s rallies against immigration, former immigration minister Philip Ruddock penned a piece for the Australian Financial Review that blamed it all on the Morrison and Albanese governments’ failure to communicate population policy to the electorate. He assures us that he himself was exemplary in this respect. Ruddock might have a point, but we need to note that his “communicating” in the lead-up to the 2001 election included spreading misinformation about children thrown overboard and mugging and chewing the scenery about how despicable it was.
Most risible was Ruddock’s assertion in the AFR that Australians “remain strongly supportive of a skilled program that drives prosperity, of a multicultural society that reflects our modern identity, of a humanitarian program that offers safety to the persecuted and close family reunions.”
“Australians” are familiar with these details of immigration policy? They’re “strongly supportive”?
As George Megalogenis wrote in the Australian fifteen years ago, “The impulse to close the door cuts across party and cultural lines, and draws on a gut call voters make that Australia can’t carry too many more people without breaking. Local born and established immigrants think alike, as do Labor, Liberal and Green voters.”
Yet, as George also noted, “no government since World War II has allowed the political cycle to dictate policy.” Which is a nice way of saying majority opinion was largely ignored.
That is a critical point. Large-scale immigration, particularly from other than northern Europe, has for eighty years been one of several technocratic projects that, thanks to bipartisan agreement, voters haven’t had a say in. Ending White Australia in the late 1960s and early 1970s in particular sits in that category, as do most of the you-beaut economic reforms — privatisation, deregulation, tariff elimination, etc — the political class celebrates today from the Hawke–Keating and Howard–Costello years. The fruits of this political model can, in part, be seen today in the slow collapse of the two-party system, and not just in Australia.
Australians tend to adjust, move on, even concede that the difficult change was for the best after all. In any case, younger generations usually prefer the present to old fuddy duddies’ reminiscences of a glorious past. Earlier waves of migrants become largely accepted; newer ones thought by some to be problematic.
This time last year I wrote on these pages that “if Kamala Harris fails against the easybeat Donald Trump in November it will be largely due to [immigration across] the southern border.” If that sounds too reductionist, perhaps we can agree with a more modest formulation: that illegal immigration was a necessary ingredient in Trump’s narrow (1.5 per cent in the national vote, 2.5 per cent in the electoral college) victory.
A crucial component is missing in a lot of commentary of Sunday’s demos, particularly those that link it with movements overseas. It’s a factor that matters for our general politics, and particularly Peter Dutton’s failure to capitalise on fear of foreigners in May’s election. It is the virtual absence of uncontrolled border-crossing into this country. Again quoting myself from August last year, “per-capita ‘illegal immigration’ numbers in America (in 2023) are roughly ten times what ours were at their peak (in 2013); and ours are close to zero today. Comparisons with Europe are similarly one-sided.”
Australia has long had a large immigration program relative to comparable countries. The Albanese government’s actions — limiting overseas students, for example — suggest an acknowledgment that earlier settings were too lax. Importantly, immigration, for all the benefits in the medium term, cannot help but negatively impact housing. And there are and always have been racist attitudes towards people of colour.
But in the United States and much of (the former Western) Europe, evidence of years of accumulated unauthorised arrivals is glaringly apparent in many citizens’ everyday lives, in towns and cities, in for example buildings and hotels used for housing them. Over here, people who arrived by boat are as rare as hen’s teeth, and of course impossible to pick out on the street. There is quite a bit of dodgy visa manipulation and overstaying, which adds to numbers and is evident in our capital cities. And, yes, conflating “legal” and “illegal” is almost de rigueur in anti-immigration rhetoric. The internet and Covid have fuelled radicalisation.
But we have nothing like the challenges that face the United States and Europe — and that, in many ways, including at the political level, is a good thing. •
