by Celina

If One Nation wants not only to win the next election, but to keep winning elections, it needs to quickly comprehend that immigration policy is the battlefield on which the future balance of political power in Australia is being decided. Immigration changes the electorate itself, determining which political coalitions can be assembled and which parties will remain capable of governing as the country's population changes.

The latest Roy Morgan analysis of voting intention by country of birth makes the scale of this predicament explicit.1 The poll illuminates that One Nation receives 29% support among voters born in mainland Europe, compared with only 9% among Asian-born voters. It attracts 30% of the Italian-born vote, 36% of the South African-born vote and 25% among Australian-born electors. By contrast, its support falls to 8% among Indian-born voters, 7% among Vietnamese, Sri Lankan and Pakistani-born voters, 6% among the Nepalese-born and only 5% among those born in mainland China.

That is an absolutely massive electoral gulf, and as such, this means that immigration policy does not just influence how voters judge One Nation. It determines how many potential One Nation voters and how many potential Labor voters will exist in the future.

This poll also shows us that Labor receives 57% support among Vietnamese-born voters, 52% among Nepalese-born voters, 49% among Sri Lankan-born voters, 46% among Chinese and Pakistani-born voters and 43% among Indian-born voters. Furthermore, the Liberal–National Coalition also performs strongly among several of these populations. Together, the two major parties receive 80% support among Chinese-born voters and 76% among Indian-born voters, compared with One Nation's 5% and 8% respectively.

Ultimately, the division revealed by this poll is therefore not even just simply between Labour and One Nation. It is between the uniparty and the populist Right. One Nation is being carried disproportionately by the Australian and European vote, while the two established parties are sustained by the non-European populations created through their immigration system. This is all to say, the current immigration system is importing people who, once enfranchised, overwhelmingly vote for the parties responsible for that system. In practical terms, it has become a voter-importation scheme for Labor and, more broadly, for the uniparty.

This is why One Nation needs to get immigration right if it wants to beat Labor and continue beating Labor. It may be possible to win an election during a period of intense anger over housing, infrastructure and population growth. It is much harder to build a lasting majority while the immigration system continues enlarging groups among which One Nation receives between 5% and 9% of the vote.

The danger is that Labor can neutralise immigration as an electoral issue by changing the terms on which it is discussed. Rather than continuing to call Pauline Hanson and her supporters racist, the Left can reduce immigration to a question of class and economic management. It can concede that migration has increased rent and housing prices, weakened wages, and placed pressure on infrastructure. It can then promise to cut the intake, train Australians, rebuild TAFE and close fraudulent visa pathways.

This is the class-reductionist version of immigration politics, championed by the likes of FriendlyJordies. Labor can adopt much of that argument because it does not require the party to reconsider the demographic transformation of Australia. It only requires Labor to promise that immigration will be administered more competently.

If One Nation remains within the same economic framework, it will be left holding the bag. Labor can announce a somewhat lower intake, accuse One Nation of exaggerating how much it would actually cut and present itself as the party capable of balancing restriction with economic necessity. Once the argument becomes solely about economics, Labor has room to compete.

Yet the composition of One Nation’s support suggests that the revolt against immigration is not solely economic. about 77% of One Nation voters own their homes, while only 17% rent. Although homeowners can still worry about their material conditions, they are not the group directly harmed by rising rents. In fact, many benefit personally from the higher property values produced by population growth.

Housing is therefore is not the underlying explanation, as opposition to mass immigration is not fundamentally economic. Our anxieties about identity, culture and demographic change manifest themselves through economic arguments because of the longstanding taboo against discussing race openly. In simple terms, these voters are concerned that their country is becoming less White.

That is the real and existential source of discontent with Labor and the uniparty. Thus, One Nation’s counter-move must be to make the argument explicitly about Western identity. Lower immigration is necessary, but it is not sufficient. The party needs to explain whom Australia should bring in, what kind of country immigration is intended to preserve and why Britain, Ireland, Europe and the wider Anglosphere should receive an explicit preference.

If One Nation allows Labor to turn immigration into an economic issue, Labor can answer enough of the complaint to neutralise it. If One Nation returns the argument to civilisational identity, the actual fracture becomes visible. Labor is not simply defending a different immigration number. It is defending an anti-European immigration system which continually imports the electorate most likely to keep it in power.

Identity is already present

The electoral divide revealed by the Roy Morgan figures does not require One Nation to transform a population concerned only with economics into one concerned with identity. They’re all ready concerned. The question is whether they receive an explicit political expression or remain translated into the more politically correct language of economics.

Of course the objection to this type of policy will be that it is crypto-racism, racial anxiety dressed as economics, demographic concerns of the kind associated with Whiteshift.2 The concept of Whiteshift, as articulated by Eric Kaufmann in his book, argues that respectable material explanations frequently carry anxieties about racial and cultural displacement. The challenge for the right is to decide whether it will explain those concerns in their own terms or continue relying on arguments which never quite reach them.

My reading is that a substantial part of the energy surrounding immigration is racial and cultural anxiety: unease about demographic change, the loss of familiar surroundings and whether the country’s future will retain a meaningful connection to its past. Material pressures can intensify that unease without fully explaining it. People can worry about rent and cultural displacement at the same time.

Left-wing commentary often describes economic grievance being converted into racial resentment. Yet more often than not, there is an existing concern about ethnic and cultural replacement, and it is being converted into an economic complaint because that is the language in which it can be expressed most comfortably.

The distribution of One Nation support makes a purely personal economic explanation inadequate. Renters face the most direct exposure to additional rental demand. Yet, One Nation’s constituency includes many homeowners and mortgage holders; recent reporting describes a substantial older, Anglo-Australian homeowner base. Specifically, 77% of One Nation voters own their home while only 17% are renters. These people may worry about repayments, their children’s prospects or the condition of their communities. Owning a house does not insulate them from economic pressure, but neither does it explain why immigration becomes the organising focus of their dissatisfaction.

Though the stronger evidence concerns origin. Scanlon’s 2025 survey found markedly warmer attitudes towards British, Italian and German immigrants than several Asian and African groups. An IPA-commissioned poll in February 2026 found 63% supported prioritising countries described as sharing Australian values, naming Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Those findings illuminate that public attitudes cannot be understood simply as an objection to additional people competing for a fixed stock of houses.

Economic language can therefore begin a conversation which political leadership must carry further. If the concern is about what Australia is becoming, that concern needs an argument about identity and a policy which addresses it. Otherwise Labor can improve the stated economic conditions and announce that it has answered the objection. The right will then be left insisting that something is still wrong without having equipped itself to explain what that something is.

The electorate immigration creates

As stated, our current immigration system is changing the composition of the electorate in ways which make that system progressively more difficult to reverse.

The contrast between the 29% support One Nation receives from mainland European-born voters and the 9% it receives from Asian-born voters illustrates the core problem. These groups are not being incorporated into the same political coalition at comparable rates. The populations most likely to support a populist challenge to the existing immigration settlement are rapidly becoming a smaller share of the country, while populations far more likely to support the parties maintaining that settlement continue to grow quickly.

This creates a political feedback loop for Labor and the Coalition to maintain the immigration system which enlarges the constituencies most likely to vote for them. Those constituencies then provide the major parties with a stronger electoral basis from which to continue the same system.

Therefore, One Nation’s immigration policy needs to address the composition of the migrants they want to bring in, not just the ones they want to keep out, or they will be fighting a losing battle. In simple terms, they need to advocate for explicitly European immigration.

How Labor neutralises the revolt

The centre is already responding

The urgency for this identity-based policy comes from the major parties’ capacity to adapt. It is a mistake to imagine that the parties responsible for high immigration must remain its unqualified defenders. They can concede that the intake has been too high, correct its most visible failures and claim to have restored control without changing the demographic direction of the system itself.

Labor’s new immigration plan makes that possibility concrete. On 17 September, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced measures intended to reduce net overseas migration to 245,000 this financial year and 225,000 by 2027-28. The plan restricts the ability of most international students to bring family members, targets “visa-hopping,” strengthens action against unlawful non-citizens and migration agents, and adds a “no further stay” condition to visitor visas. Labor will also employ another 100 compliance officers while prioritising visa applicants in sectors such as healthcare, construction and education.3

This is almost an exact demonstration of how the centre can respond to the immigration revolt without accepting the Right’s identity-based understanding of it. Labor can consequently tell dissatisfied voters that migration is falling while assuring employers and institutions that the pathways they regard as essential will remain open.

There is still disagreement within the centre about how far this adaptation should go. South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has warned against a “race to the bottom” and described concessions to anti-immigration populism as “appeasement.” 4 Nevertheless, these tensions concern the extent and distribution of restriction, rather than whether immigration should continue to be organised principally around economic requirements.

Labor is therefore beginning to occupy some of the ground on which One Nation has built its recent support. So if it One Nation contains its immigration policy in the realm of economics, it’s primary populist issue can be redirected back towards the political centre.

Blair’s calculation

Tony Blair understood the political advantage of answering a grievance without accepting the challenger’s whole worldview. This is why he advised Keir Starmer in July 2024 to contain the populist right by responding to voters’ grievances over immigration while holding the political centre. The aim of this, as expounded by Blair, was to break the connection between dissatisfaction with immigration and support for the Right. If the British Labour Party could convince voters that it understood their concerns and was prepared to act, those voters would have less reason to turn to its opponents.

Blair’s own policy program during his term illuminates this advice. His government had widened opportunities for economic migration while tightening asylum rules and security controls. The Migration Policy Institute’s account of his premiership documents how these policies developed together. Labour could champion the economic benefits of immigration while presenting itself as firm about who could enter the country and on what terms.

The populist Right must recognise the strategic allure of that combination. A government can offer voters tighter enforcement and more selective entry rules while maintaining high levels of immigration overall. And, for voters primarily concerned about whether the government is actually in control, this might be enough for them. Thus, the danger for the Right is that its opponents can satisfy enough of that demand to win back voters while preserving much of the immigration system the Right wants to change.

The Danish method

Denmark demonstrates how a left party can introduce restriction through its own political tradition. Under Mette Frederiksen, the Social Democrats linked immigration control to the security of the welfare state and the cohesion required to sustain it. Her January 2026 address placed stronger removal proposals alongside pensions, wages and public welfare. The political message was that social provision and border control belonged within the same governing project.

That combination has a clear internal logic, as a welfare state depends on the willingness of people to contribute to institutions whose beneficiaries they recognise as members of a shared community. Persistent failures of employment and integration can place pressure on public expenditure while weakening confidence in the reciprocity on which the system depends. A social-democratic party can consequently defend restriction as necessary to preserve the achievements it regards as its own.

Sweden’s extraordinary 2015 intake, approximately 163,000 asylum applicants, supplied a neighbouring warning about suicidal humanitarian ambition. Denmark’s Social Democrats could look across the border and draw a different conclusion about the obligations of the left.

There was also fiscal evidence with which to challenge easy assumptions. Denmark’s Finance Ministry’s revised analysis of 2019 recorded substantial net public costs for the MENAPT group, which includes countries across the Middle East and North Africa and others such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey.

Australia cannot simply copy this case, as we do not have the same immigration problems or material conditions. Its migration system selects a different mix of entrants, and Treasury modelling found the 2018-19 permanent migrant cohort fiscally positive over its projected lifetime, with skilled migrants contributing most favourably. Danish annual accounts and Australian lifetime projections cannot be compared as equivalent estimates.

Denmark shows how the left can make restriction serve its existing commitments. In Australia, those same material commitments can give Labor reasons to retain a large, economically selected intake. As stated, the Right therefore needs an argument which does not collapse into pure economics or appeal to law and order.

Labor’s Australian blend

Labor’s holding position

The Australian Labor Party like many other Western Left-wing political outfits possesses much of the machinery required for this Blair-style response.

For now, Labor still looks like it’s at a holding position. It is attempting to answer public pressure without unsettling the interests and commitments that sustain Labor’s existing approach. But the Right should not assume that Labor will remain on the defensive. To draw support away from One Nation, it could offer a more visibly restrictive immigration programme, giving dissatisfied voters enough evidence of change to reconsider their allegiance without abandoning its commitment to substantial legal Third-World migration.

Albanese also has a language in which to present that shift, “progressive patriotism” (pseudo-patriotism). During his September 2025 visit to London, where he met with progressive leaders from Canada, Spain and Iceland, he linked strong border controls to maintaining public confidence in legal migration and mainstream government, pointing to Labor’s continuation of boat turnbacks as evidence of its credibility.

“We have kept Operation Sovereign Borders [the Abbott-era policy to stop migrant boats]. We’ve continued to maintain a strong control of our borders. We have turned back boats…We’ve done things that we said we would do, and that’s been important to ensure that you can have that faith from people that you’re prepared to undertake an orderly system.”

His remarks suggest how a tougher immigration policy could fit within that broader appeal, keeping faith with voters on economic and immigration policies to effectively marginalise the political “far-right”.

Class reductionism

The Australian Labor Party hasn’t completely bathed itself in the “progressive patriotism” that Albanese spoke of during his time in London. Yet, they have the potential to go full class reductionism, which would allow them to keep the argument around economics.

Friendlyjordies video The Migration Dilemma connects migration with the damage done to vocational education. The political extension practically writes itself for the Labor Party, rebuild TAFE, train Australians first, prosecute exploitation, close educational loopholes and import the skills required to build houses. Every element of this can be presented as restoring the productive capacity of the country.

The time required to train people also gives this argument considerable flexibility. The government can promise domestic self-reliance in the long term while defending continued migration in the meantime. Each exception has an individually plausible explanation, whether it be for trades, healthcare or aged care, while their cumulative effect preserves a substantial intake.

That is an own goal waiting for One Nation. David Farley’s August intervention, adding skilled-worker exceptions to the party’s headline migration figure, exposed how quickly restriction dissolves into competing definitions of economic necessity. If One Nation accepts the same framework, the contest becomes an argument over who can distinguish a real shortage from a manufactured one.

This is also why accusing the left of hypocrisy towards the working class is an incomplete strategy. It tells Labor exactly how to recover from it, that being, answer the material complaint. Build more housing, raise the cost of importing labour, strengthen workplace enforcement and subsidise apprenticeships. If Labor is being accused of abandoning workers, it can seek rehabilitation by delivering visible benefits to them.

The right therefore makes itself vulnerable when its entire indictment takes the form of an accusation that Labor has failed to behave like Labor. That argument invites the governing party to reclaim its own tradition.

The left can thus rely on class reductionism to translate cultural conflict into distribution and wages. Furthermore, they can use “Pseudo-patriotism”, employed by figures like Friendlyjordies who embody an anti-woke, “dirtbag Left” approach to Labor politics, and hijack the language of national pride. They recognise that people want to feel the country is theirs, even if the membership of that country remains defined in extremely liberal terms.

As such, One Nation needs a claim that remains intelligible and distinct even if the Left's rhetoric and Australia’s material conditions are improved.

One Nation’s own goal: Adopting Labor’s premises

One Nation’s immigration programme is substantially more restrictive than anything offered by Labor or the Coalition. Its September policy proposes cutting approximately 750,000 temporary visa places over three years, reducing international student visas, virtually eliminating visas for the families of temporary migrants and producing an initial period of net-negative migration. After that contraction, the party would impose an annual net overseas migration ceiling of 130,000.5

This obviously represents a significant break from the migration settings maintained by both major parties and would give Australians the “breathing space” Hanson has promised. But its scale does not resolve the strategic problem facing One Nation. A lower number is only the beginning of an immigration policy. The party must still explain which migrants should make up the continuing intake and what national purpose their selection is intended to serve.

As mentioned, David Farley exposed this weakness during his August appearance on Insiders.6 Thus if One Nation accepts that migration should be organised primarily around filling whatever shortages employers identify, it is arguing inside the same economic framework as Labor.

This is the danger of allowing the 130,000 ceiling to become the whole policy. Yes, the headline figure is much lower than what the major parties are offering, but the underlying principle remains that migrants are productive inputs to be distributed according to labour-market demand. As such, One Nation would then be left arguing over which shortages are genuine rather than offering a fundamentally different account of what immigration is for.

The party’s proposed country ban list does provide a point of differentiation. Under its security policy, migration would be restricted from countries subject to the government’s “do not travel” advice. But this criterion would not categorically exclude either India or China, despite those countries being among the greatest sources of Australia’s recent migration and among the largest net contributors to the Labor vote. Indian-born and Chinese-born voters vote for One Nation at 8% and 5% respectively, while voting for Labour at 43% and 46% respectively. Furthermore, a ban list only identifies some of the people Australia should keep out. It does not establish whom Australia should actively seek to bring in.

That distinction is super important because exclusion and preference answer different questions.

If the party confines itself to a ban list, it remains trapped within the framework it desperately needs to escape. One Nation therefore needs to supplement its restrictionism with a positive principle of selection. It must move beyond identifying whom Australia should exclude and state whom Australia should prefer. Otherwise, Labor and the Coalition will continue building the same demographic and electoral order, only more slowly, while One Nation remains unable to explain what the continuing immigration programme is intended to preserve.

Origin can also be neutralised

Even a greater emphasis on migrant origin can be absorbed by Labor if One Nation fails to explain why origin matters. A centre-left or right-wing government can distinguish between countries without accepting that immigration should preserve Australia’s historical and civilisational character. It can simply turn origin into another measure of economic performance and risk.

A smart technocratic Left could differentiate between countries according to English proficiency, qualification recognition, employment outcomes, visa compliance, etc. Labor or the Liberals could argue that applicants from some countries integrate into the labour market more successfully. They could restrict underperforming pathways and expand more successful ones, presenting the result as a more selective immigration programme.

This would give voters something tangible to recognise, as the government would no longer appear indifferent to where migrants came from, and could claim that it had abandoned the assumption that every source country produced identical outcomes. Yet the discrimination would remain organised around economics.

That is why One Nation must be clearer about what it means by origin. If its concern is simply to identify the most productive applicants, Labor can pursue that objective without difficulty. If its concern is the historical and cultural character of Australia, then the argument has moved onto different ground.

What the counter-move requires

The counter-move begins with a substantially lower overall intake, because the numbers still matter. One Nation is therefore right to pursue a period of net-negative migration followed by a binding ceiling.

But the continuing intake should be organised around national continuity. This means establishing an explicit preference for migrants from Europe and the wider Anglosphere, especially Britain. Australia should decide first which sources of migration are most likely to sustain its civilisational character and then determine how the economic needs of the country can be met within that framework.

This requires a clear distinction between migrants Australia actively wants and those it simply has little reason to ban. Without this distinction, immigration policy becomes entirely defensive. The state will just exclude the worst applicants without ever identifying the best sources for assimilation. And undeniably the best sources for assimilation-based immigration policy would prioritise populations most likely to assimilate successfully: Western ones.

One Nation should therefore connect lower numbers with a positive account of national preference. Immigration would remain capable of serving economic needs, but those needs would operate within the prior requirement of preserving the country’s civilisational identity.

This is exactly where One Nation can establish a distinction which Labor cannot adopt. Labor cannot do without breaking with its existing left-wing worldview; it will never speak in the language of preserving Australia’s demographics.

As discussed, that distinction has electoral consequences. The Roy Morgan figures show that the populations most likely to support One Nation are Australian-born voters and migrants from several older European sources, while many of the populations produced by the present immigration system overwhelmingly support Labor and the major parties. A preference for Western immigration would therefore do two things simultaneously: preserve Australia’s demographics and strengthen the constituency most likely to defend that settlement politically.

Winning once or losing permanently

At the crux of the immigration revolt is a racial and identity-based grievance which the Right has been reluctant to acknowledge explicitly. Many Australians' opposition to mass immigration is not fundamentally economic; it is racial. They are concerned that the country is becoming less recognisably European.

For too long, the Right has translated this concern into the safer language of economics because those arguments can be made without attracting the accusation of racism. But this apprehension has also left the movement unable to explain the full source of its own support. If voters were concerned only about material conditions, Labor could recover them by improving those conditions. The fact that opposition persists among homeowners and other people who may materially benefit from population growth shows that something more fundamental is involved.

The political climate is now more receptive to stating this directly. Increasing numbers of White Australians no longer accept that attachment to their own continuity is uniquely illegitimate, particularly when every other group is permitted to organise politically around identity, representation and collective interest.

The Left increasingly understands this. Its own strategists now warn that calling Pauline Hanson and her supporters racist can make her more popular. Consequently, the attack is shifting onto other ground.7 One Nation will instead be portrayed as economically irresponsible, hostile to workers, indifferent to women or compromised by its foreign-policy positions. The response is not to abandon economic arguments, but to stop allowing them to conceal the central conflict of Mass Third-World immigration.

The polling suggests that the public is increasingly prepared to hear that argument. One Nation’s rise, preferences concerning migrant origins and the Roy Morgan divide between Australian and European voters and much of the non-European electorate all show that the conflict already has a political form. Refusing to name it only prevents One Nation from explaining the source of its own support.

One Nation became popular because Australians were no longer willing to accept that the transformation of their country was beyond political dispute. It can consolidate those gains by stating plainly what the economic language has often concealed: immigration is inherently about identity and demographic power. The moment no longer calls for another euphemism or more veiled language; it calls for a party willing to say that Australia must remain recognisably Western.