Importing a Tasmania’s worth of people every year

Immigration is the sort of issue that Australians are told not to talk about. And yet, a few weeks ago, tens of thousands did more than that.

The March for Australia rallies were derided as neo-Nazi gatherings, but television footage told a more nuanced story: ordinary Australians voicing their frustration at housing shortages, clogged roads, and stretched services.

One marcher put it strongly: 'Love migration, okay. I'm from a family of immigrants as well. The point is how many do you bring into the country? Where do you house them?'

But there was some darkness. In Melbourne, Thomas Sewell, leader of the Nazi National Socialist Networks, took the microphone. Many other rallies had NSN members either speaking or present at the front of the crowd. The problem with all these marches is obvious: fringe leadership, opaque organisation, and no credibility.

Small wonder conservatives like Topher Field and Joel Jammal counselled people not to go.

And yet, despite the amateurism, people came. Tens of thousands of middle Australians, the sort of people for whom a footy grand final was probably the only mass gathering they'd ever attended.

The issue is real. Australia's immigration rate – 1.6 per cent of the population annually – is the highest in the OECD bar Luxembourg (a special case as tax havens attract an entirely different type of immigrant).

Each year we effectively import a Tasmania's worth of people, while building fewer houses than we need for those already here. The result? An economy that grows while the average citizen gets poorer, and a housing market that has become a battleground of young and old; and those with assets or an inheritance, and those without.

If Peter Dutton had campaigned on the issue at the last election he would have changed the map of Australian politics. He started off strongly and then backed right back.

While our polling showed immigration wasn't top-of-mind, it was linked to cost-of-living, and housing affordability which were. It was also the one driver of declining living standards squarely under Albanese's control. Deployed correctly it would have sheeted blame for the drop in living standards to the government.

I can understand why Dutton would have been nervous. Immigration is one of those subjects that the media and political classes insist cannot be discussed, and it has the potential to alienate migrant communities.

The government's outrage at 'racism' has been selective. Government members were part of the March for Palestine two weekends ago. This march included people chanting anti-Semitic slogans with some of them carrying flags associated with Hamas, and one holding a portrait of Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei.