Migration is dropping, but public concern is climbing. Why?
- Written by: Weekend Times
Net overseas migration is declining. It peaked in 2023, and as of mid-2026 it has dropped by 45%.
Yet public sentiment has moved the other way. The Lowy Institute’s 2026 poll,
released last week, found 55% of Australians believe the number of migrants coming to Australia each year is too high. That is a record for the poll, up two points from last year and seven points from 2024.
So as migration falls, concern about it climbs. The numbers and their political weight are pulling in opposite directions.
This phenomenon exposes how ineffective it is to focus solely on numbers in debates about migration. No matter how low the figures get, parties that campaign on the topic will always be able to shift the goalposts.
Migration is the most debated public policy issue of the current moment, both in Australia and overseas. In this five-part series, we unpack how Australia’s migration system works, both practically and politically, and what its future might look like.
Good or bad?
The politicisation of immigration in Australia is neither surprising nor new.
For example, in the early 2010s, refugees, asylum seekers and “boat arrivals” dominated media narratives and public debates, despite only making a modest total percentage of the overall permanent migration intake annually.
Migration has long been framed as a simple binary: good or bad for the economy, good or bad for society.
But this framing, largely influenced by elites, rarely yields meaningful contributions to good policy-making.
Immigration policy is extremely complex, and Australia’s immigration program is no exception.
There are serious questions for governments about what kind of program the country should run. They need to decide what balance between permanent and temporary migration Australia can sustain. They need to consider whether temporary intakes should be tied to the country’s capacity to convert those workers into permanent residents, rather than left to drift.
As migration expert Alan Gamlen argues, the central challenge for governments is managing an immigration program that promotes “prosperity, protects human dignity and sustains social cohesion”.
Yet in Australia, the debate rages almost entirely over whether immigration is too high or too low.
Read more: What is migration for? How national needs wrestle with a basic human desire
Crisis as a political weapon
The current political discourse has reached a point where the detail barely registers. What matters is how the debate is framed, and parties such as One Nation and the Coalition have successfully framed migration as a crisis.
Such framing and the politicisation of migration debates oversimplify a very complex system, fuel misinformation and increase polarisation. It all serves to position migrants as threats to the economic and societal wellbeing of domestic citizens.
The dangers of this debate obscure not only how much Australia relies on migration, but also the cost of a system that tends to produce a second class of workers who are systematically underpaid, disempowered and exploited.
The problem for Labor
For Labor, debates on migration are politically poisoned ground. It’s part of the reason why One Nation has been so successful in driving negative sentiments towards immigration.
The concept of “issue-ownership theory” helps explain this politically fraught terrain for Labor.
Voters tend to trust centre-right parties on borders and immigration, while the centre-left tends to “own” policies related to health, education and industrial relations.
This is no different in the Australian context. So when migration becomes salient, Labor’s instinct is often to neutralise it.
Before the re-emergence of the politicisation of migration midway through the Albanese government’s first term, the Labor government was finally beginning to reckon with a migration system it described as “broken”.
It made real early progress to reform the system, including a world-leading visa to protect migrant workers who report exploitation.
But once migration became politicised again in mid-2023, the appointment of political fixer Tony Burke as both minister for home affairs and minister for immigration and citizenship signalled a change in approach.
The focus shifted towards the politics of migration, rather than substantive policy debates. Labor’s framing consistently sought to reassure voters that migration is in decline, and that Labor can be trusted to maintain a “sensible” migration program.
But since 2023, we’ve seen the surge in polling and electoral success of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, as well as swelling debates and protests from anti-immigration activists. One Nation is now polling as the party best suited to handle immigration issues.
Will the political temperature come down?
Will falling migration numbers eventually cool the politics?
The United Kingdom suggests not. UK net migration has fallen, yet only 16% of the UK public believe migration has fallen. Half think it has risen.
As long as the debate stays politicised, as long as the rhetoric of an immigration “crisis” frames migrants as outsiders and threats, anti-immigration sentiment will persist, and so will support for the parties that trade on it.
As economist Jonathan Portes argues, chasing a net migration target does not defuse the politicisation of migration. It can instead legitimise it, turning every figure into a test the government is seen as passing or failing.
And simply repeating that net overseas migration is falling will not lower the temperature. Without a clear migration plan that politicians are willing to explain and defend to the public, good governance of the program will remain out of reach.
Emily Foley receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
