The political storm over migration has intensified, with Shadow Home Affairs Minister Andrew Hastie declaring Australians were becoming “strangers in their own country” due to immigration. His remarks drew a sharp response from Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, who countered that migration levels were actually falling. “The country must feel ‘strange’ to an outdated Liberal Party,” he said, accusing Hastie of framing the debate in ways out of step with today’s Australia.
The exchange came as the Coalition continues to review its migration platform, a process that many insiders say has opened new cracks within the party. Hastie’s claim that “in the last two years, we’ve added nearly a million extra people to our population” reflects growing pressure on Liberal figures to speak directly to concerns about housing and infrastructure, but it has also amplified accusations of race-based politics.
That debate escalated further when political commentator Stephen Chavura wrote on X that “Australia should absolutely prefer Anglo-Celtic-Euro peoples first and foremost for general immigration. It’s entirely conducive to our culture and heritage. A non-ethnically selective immigration policy is simply national suicide. Multiculturalism is cancer.” His post was in response to former senior immigration official Abul Rizvi, who had directed a question to Andrew Hastie, asking whether his comments meant abandoning Australia’s 1989 parliamentary motion on a non-discriminatory migration program. “If so, which races/religions, etc will he favour/oppose? Perhaps he can clarify this?” Rizvi wrote.
Into this debate stepped pollster and strategist Kos Samaras, who on 27 September published a lengthy analysis titled Status Lost, Blame Found: The psychology behind the Anti-Immigration. He argued that the sudden rise in anti-immigration rhetoric after the federal election was rooted not in policy but in psychology. “Many conservatives had convinced themselves Australia was on the cusp of a US-style culture-war realignment. Instead, the electorate comprehensively ruled that out,” he wrote. According to Samaras, what is now visible is “status threat,” where groups long dominant culturally and politically feel their position slipping. “Status threat breeds grievance, and immigration becomes the easiest escape pod,” he said.
Samaras described the pattern as one of grievance politics masking deeper shifts. “It creates a clear ‘us versus them’ line without confronting the uncomfortable truth: that the electorate itself has shifted,” he wrote. He went on to argue that conservatives facing defeat often resort to performance politics. “After a bruising defeat, loudly talking about bans, caps, and freezes is less about policy and more about theatre, an attempt to project control, to reassure their base that they still set the terms of debate,” he said. “Have a think about the media and online coverage of conservative issues since May 3rd, you would think they actually won. Hence, it’s politics as performance: if you can’t win at the ballot box, you can at least perform on certain media platforms, and here on social media to convince yourself that you are still running the show.”
For Samaras, the consequences are clear. “Polling since May 3 suggests the Labor lead has held or even widened. By 2028, another 700,000 Gen Z voters will be enrolled. That cohort is more diverse, more progressive, and less interested in exclusionary politics than any before it,” he said. He concluded with a stark image: “What we’re watching isn’t strategy, it’s the political equivalent of a silverback throwing a tantrum, pounding its chest, minus the tribe and jungle.”
With another anti-immigration rally already announced for mid-October, the pressure on Liberal leadership to articulate a clear position is mounting. Whether the Coalition can navigate between Hastie’s warnings, Chavura’s rhetoric, and Samaras’s critique will shape how migration is debated in the months ahead.
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