Libs have no plan for immigration tensions, so Labor must act before it gets ugly

If Hamlet had been a pundit, he might have pondered whether it’s worse to be wrong, or to be disbelieved. With classical Greek sadism, the myth goes that the god Apollo cursed Cassandra to utter true prophecies but forever be ignored. Being wrong stings, but being ignored is the stuff of tragedy.

It’s with this kind of energy that I approach the impending national immigration debate. The Liberal Party has promised it will soon release principles for managing migration. That oppositional politics will turn it into an unproductive and unedifying partisan stoush is predestined. What happens next? Slow-motion tragedy. Unless someone, somewhere, lends Cassandra an ear.

Illustration by Simon LetchCredit:

There are two ways to discuss immigration. In good time, civilly and constructively. Or too late, angrily and hurtfully.

In most of the Western world, the public discussion comes too late. Symbolic of that fact is a 2025 English-language reprint of The Camp of the Saints, the dystopian 1973 vision of immigration run amok by French author Jean Raspail. Cassandras everywhere are not shocked. In fact, it’s been a long, lazy slouch to be reborn.

The book’s fortunes have mirrored the immigration debate itself. On publication, the novel was condemned and rejected by polite society. Since then, it has been spoken about covertly. It resurfaces when unease over migration overflows. The immigration debate is red-hot in Europe and the US; in a small digital world, the embers have spread to Australia.

The novel describes the arrival by boat of wave upon wave of immigrants from poor nations to Europe’s shores, an “invasion” of the world’s poor into rich nations. The foreword to the new edition argues that the book is diagnostic, not racist. A quick dip in is enough to put the lie to that claim.

But the real enemies in the novel are not the newcomers. And this is important to understand as we ready ourselves for the controversy that has inspired arson attacks in the UK. The author is concerned that the compassionate West, which has grown callous to the Christian cultural tradition that birthed impersonal altruism, would allow itself and its values to be subsumed.

It was an expression of this same fear that inspired Enoch Powell’s infamous 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech, and which has more recently come to be characterised as “suicidal empathy” – a Western social trend of valorising all other people and cultures while being ashamed of one’s own.

Powell and Raspail were condemned in their time, but the angst has remained. Eventually, voters who felt unheard by the mainstream political parties have embraced populists who have nothing to lose. New movements promise to stem the tide of immigration; Powell’s “re-emigration” idea is back. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party is surging, as are the Alternative for Deutschland in Germany and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France. Donald Trump, who vowed to curb illegal immigration, is increasingly under pressure from the hard MAGA core of his party. They’re making it clear that it’s not just illegal entry they want stopped, but legal migration at scale as well.

For years, Australia was able to avoid the disquiet building in other nations by focusing on skilled migration and using our island borders to prevent illegal arrivals. But as Australians watch the developments in the Anglosphere and feel the economic squeeze at home, they have become more uncomfortable with the number of migrants coming here by legal means.

Of late, the concerns are characterised as just a matter of infrastructure and housing. That’s a hopeful view because it suggests we could build our way out of an uncomfortable conversation. But the truth revealed by the March for Australia protests and opportunistic neo-Nazi grandstanding is that many people aren’t merely concerned about overcrowding. They are worried about being culturally crowded out.

Into this moment walks the Liberal Party, thrashed and demoralised after a historic election loss. Recent polling has found that the immigration-sceptical One Nation has surged to 18 per cent of the primary vote, mostly at the expense of the centre right. From opposition, the Liberal Party has the task of solving one of our thorniest problems.

In a very gentle gesture of acknowledgment that voters are worried about more than commuter congestion, the Liberals have floated the idea of a tougher values test for aspiring migrants. Progressive commentators reflexively responded to the test by mocking the idea that there is such a thing, or that our values are something to treasure. They are the reason Raspail’s self-hating characters are back in print.

But the Labor Party shouldn’t get too comfortable with the popcorn just yet. Overseas experience suggests that while centre-right parties harm themselves with internal battles over an acceptable stance on immigration, voters first punish parties that sit on the sidelines.

Neither party has yet dared to approach the source of much fear: that a focus on multiculturalism instead of cohesion is creating ethnic tribes rather than multicoloured Australians. And that a generous welfare state, the crowning glory of high-trust liberal societies, becomes a source of resentment and suspicion in a nation that fails to coalesce around common values.

It can’t be emphasised enough how hard these conversations are to have constructively. There are racists who want to jump in and twist frank discussion into racial hate. Progressives who prefer to sink the nation with all its passengers than acknowledge a problem. And social media, which has created avenues to whip up fear among migrant communities that any discussion of togetherness is a rejection of them.

And yet, if we truly value the pluralistic and tolerant society that makes Australia so special, if we believe in preserving a multi-ethnic nation and guarding our harmony, these are precisely the questions we need to navigate together.

The Liberal Party has no platform to prevail. Chances are it won’t even come close to hitting the mark. The real challenge is to the government that currently holds power. Will it embrace the opportunity to have the hard discussion before it’s too late? Or will it – and this is Cassandra’s prediction – play politics, abetting the rise of the racists?

Parnell Palme McGuinness is an insights and advocacy strategist. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens and is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies.