Scapegoating migrants is designed to distract our attention from the truth and real issues – the abuse of corporate and media power and failure to tackle housing shortages for younger generations.

The Liberal Party looks like following the rot that set in with John Howard – Tampa and dog whistling about Asian migration. But this time the Liberal Party might be kicking an own goal because of the electoral clout of our migrant communities.

John Menadue

The warning signs for the Liberals are clear. It has offended voters with Chinese and Indian backgrounds. It paid the electoral consequences at the last two federal elections.

Angus Taylor says that in migration matters he will focus on “Australian values… protecting the Australian way of life”. Whatever that is. He says that “immigration standards have been too low”.

Who does he have in mind? Muslims, where we keep blaming all Muslims for crimes of individuals. Do we blame all Italian Catholics for the mafia?

Taylor is harking back to the Australia of 50 years ago. Modern Australia is now very different with 32 per cent of our population born overseas and about half of our population being either born overseas or had at least one parent born overseas

There have been major surges in migrants from China and India. Political parties will ignore these new demographics at their peril.

Australia-Chinese voters

The “China threat” highlighted by the Liberal Party has caused concern amongst Chinese voters. Senator James Paterson has been particularly active on this. Peter Dutton was very vocal on Chinese naval ships circumventing Australia. There have been trade disputes with China which the Liberal Party has sought to exploit. At the last election Senator Hume warned us about “Chinese spies”. She followed with a dissembling apology making her offence even worse.

Not surprising all this antagonised many Chinese who are small business people with strong family ties and usually voted for the Liberal Party.

But not now. In the 2022 election at least five seats with significant Chinese voters, including Reid, Chisholm, Bennelong and Tangney, tipped the result to the ALP. Without those extra seats the Albanese government would not have had a majority in the House of Representatives.

In its post 2022 election review the Liberal Party said, “The swing against the Liberal Party was significantly greater in electorates which have a higher concentration of voters of Chinese ancestry. In the top 15 seats by Chinese ancestry the swing against the Party (on a 2PP basis) was 6.6 per cent, compared to 3.7 per cent in other seats”.

In the 2025 election this swing of Chinese voters to the ALP was further entrenched. In electorates with high Chinese populations the ALP won seats like Banks and Deakin. Chinese voters in these electorates supported the ALP at approximately 65 to 70 per cent in 2PP votes compared to 30 to 35 per cent for the Coalition.

Australia-Indian voters

Jacinta Price offended Indian voters in the 2025 election suggesting that the Labor Government was giving special treatment to Indian migrants because they would vote for the ALP. Despite many opportunities she failed to genuinely deny these anti-Indian comments.

The Indian Australian community with over 916,000 migrants in 2025 is projected to overtake the UK as the largest migrant group. A 2022 Carnegie survey found 43 per cent of Indian-Australians identified with the ALP compared to 26 per cent for the Coalition. Victoria seats with high Indian populations such as Calwell and Gorton voted strongly ALP in the 2025 election.

(The above analysis has been assisted by James Reed and posted in Race, Culture, Nation in May 2025)

Chinese and Indian voters were clearly very important in the 2025 election result. Will the Liberal Party keep offending them and other migrant groups that might find themselves typecast as of lesser value in a multicultural Australia?

Many of the Liberal Party shadow ministers that offended Chinese and Indian voters so thoroughly are now back in the shadow ministry – Senator Hume as Deputy Leader, Jacinta Price and Senator Paterson. Andrew Hastie will also  join the shadow ministry. He recently stoked the racist fires that we now “feel strangers in our own home”. It sounds like the “civilisation” erasure that Donald Trump and the extreme right around the world keep talking about.

These political misfits in the Liberal Party keep taking their cues from NewsCorp and Sky. How can the ALP be so lucky?

And what of the record on migration of the Liberal Party in government?

To this day the Liberal Party keeps repeating the lie that Abbott and Morrison stop the boats. The Canberra Press Gallery, as on so many issues, swallowed this lie and remain unwilling to admit their mistake.

The Abbott government encouraged boat arrivals by voting against the Malaysian Arrangement. By the time the much-vaunted Operation Sovereign Borders commenced in December 2013 the boat arrivals had been reduced to a trickle.

Peter Dutton then stepped in with his maladministration of migration. With boats stopped, people smugglers and racketeers – particularly from China and Malaysia – commenced arranging for “asylum seekers” to come to Australia by air rather than boat. The number of Protection Visas Applications by air increased from 8,480 in 2012/13 to 27,931 in 2017/18.

Abul Rizvi described the Dutton failure. “In 2017/18 Dutton has set a record for the number of asylum seeker applications received. The record is likely to be exceeded in 2018/19. Tackling the chaos in our visa processing system will cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly north of a billion dollars and take many years. Is the Government’s Border Protection mantra a diversion from its real border protection failings… The Home Affairs Annual Report says a large portion of these applications (by air) are “unmeritorious” …and that these “unmeritorious” protection visa applications undermine Australia’s arrangements for protecting people who are genuinely in need of our help.”

This Dutton failure is still having serious implications. Asylum seekers arriving by air now constitute most of the onshore protection claims in Australia. Approximately 26,000 people are waiting a decision on their refugee status. Most came by air. Few will be successful. Over 48,000 people are still awaiting outcomes at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. There is now a major problem in clearing the backlog of asylum seekers that came to Australia by air when Peter Dutton was minister.

The Liberal Party has a very unfortunate record in immigration/refugee policy and administration. Though vehemently denied, it has really been about race. It started with John Howard.

It was a long and difficult road to rid ourselves of White Australia.The really substantive moves were the abolition of White Australia from the ALP Platform in 1965. Don Dunstan and Gough Whitlam initiated this reform. Then followed the Racial Discrimination Act of the Whitlam Government. The test of the ending of White Australia came with the welcome the Fraser Government gave to 250,000 Indo-Chinese people.That number included refugees, family reunion and an Orderly Departure program.

Will the Liberal Party, fearful of One Nation, now seek to turn all this around with dog whistling and weasel words about values and balance?

The government is also shirking its moral and legal responsibility to asylum seekers. With climate change and rising sea levels we are likely to see massive displacement of tens of thousands of people in the low-lying parts of Asia. Will we help them? Are we getting ready?

We continue our cruelty to asylum seekers. We shunt off them off to Nauru at great expense. We refuse entry to Australian wives and children from camps in Syria. They have made mistakes but where is our forgiveness and humanity? These women and children can be carefully processed and monitored on return to Australia.

Our prime minister boasts about the decision to reject these women and children –  “ if you make your bed, you lie in it.” What a brutal thing to say. Power does reveal what people are really like. “I will punish these very vulnerable Australian women and children to show you how tough I am.” He doesn’t show the same toughness to those who commit genocide. Or the Australian citizens fighting for the IDF.

The government inherited a migration mess from successive Liberal Party ministers. But the government has been too slow to fix the mess.

A serious administrative problem which the government has not addressed is the inclusion of the immigration function within the Department of Home Affairs. This has resulted in critical issues of settlement and social cohesion taking second place to the Home Affairs department’s focus on security and borders.

Humanity keeps losing out to security, time and time again.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/02/scapegoating-migrants-is-as-old-as-history-itself/

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One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has issued a partial apology for her suggestion that there are no "good" Muslims while attacking the government for "bending over backwards" for migrants and claiming without evidence that there are Australian suburbs Westerners cannot enter.

On Monday, in a late night discussion about the possible return of the wives and children of Islamic State militants, Senator Hanson told Sky News: "I've got no time for radical Islam. Their religion concerns me because of what it says in the Koran. They hate Westerners. That's what it's all about."

"You say, 'Well, there's good Muslims out there.' How can you tell me there are good Muslims?" she said.

The comments were rejected by politicians across the political spectrum, including Nationals senator Matt Canavan who labelled them "divisive, inflammatory [and] un-Australian".

They were also condemned as hateful by Islamic leaders.

Senator Hanson told the ABC on Wednesday that she did not believe there are no "good" Muslims and referenced a non-practising Muslim woman who stood for One Nation.

She apologised if she "offended anyone out there that doesn't believe in sharia law, or multiple marriages, or wants to bring ISIS brides in, or people from Gaza that believe in a caliphate".

But she added: "In general, that is what they want — a world caliphate. And I am not going to apologise … I will have my say now before it's too late."

Senator Hanson then suggested that the government's policies were being unduly influenced by Muslim voters and called for a "far more stringent" vetting process for prospective migrants.

"People are in fear. We don't know who these people are. You've got 18,000 people on ASIO's watchlist. Doesn't that tell you something?" she said.

"We've had terrorist attacks in this country, and it's not just about terrorist attacks, it's about our changing way of life."

Senator Hanson alleged that Australians were not welcome in some suburbs with large Muslim populations, such as Lakemba in Sydney's west.

Her comments to the ABC followed a social media statement that doubled down on her earlier remarks.

"I guess they aren't used to hearing a politician tell the truth without worrying about political correctness," the post said.

In a statement on Tuesday, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke called on Senator Hanson to apologise and said the comments were "wrong and cruel" and "not worthy of someone who holds public office".

READ MORE:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-18/pauline-hanson-partially-apologises-for-muslim-remarks/106357130

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