OPINION

All articles are copyright, no reproduction in any format without permission.

The winter of our discontent
Our screens and pages resound with a pseudo debate about what the political class perceives is most troubling to Australian electors. Spoiler: it is NOT immigration. One of the many websites I follow closely is an Australian one. It is called ‘Pearls and Irritations’, and each issue comprises four or five short essays on an invariably relevant topic, each written by individuals with something to say. Today I am focussed on one which discusses the findings of a recent poll conducted by the Redbridge opinion-studying group at https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/09/politicians-keep-talking-about-immigration-voters-keep-talking-about-their-bills/. Every politician in the country should study it, print it off, and blutack it to the inside of the dunny door. RedBridge Group is a research and strategy firm specialising in public opinion, social trends, and behavioural insights. It works across industry, government, and media to help organisations understand community attitudes and navigate complex social and political environments.
The essay’s opening paragraph says it all and is worth quoting in full: “Housing costs, falling living standards and distrust of politicians are driving deep frustration among voters. Yet immigration dominates the national debate, obscuring the economic pressures behind the drift away from the major parties.”
Throughout 2025 Redbridge conducted over 400 focus groups which included voters in the outer, usually Western, suburbs and in regional towns country-wide. They listened to people describing what was going wrong for them. They talked about the mortgage that never shrinks; the rent that eats into 50% of their weekly, effectively diminishing, wage; the cost of food; the ever-rising power bill; the wait to see a doctor; their kids unable to leave home. They never talked about immigration, even after the March for Australia anti-immigration rallies and the parading of masked bullies unwilling to show their faces.
What is not discussed by politicians of any stripe is that real household disposable income per person has fallen by more than 8% since mid-2022. Real wages sit around 6% below where they were in 2020.The rich get immeasurably richer and social and fiscal inequality is huge. Productivity is stalled, along with business innovation and research. In its place we are swamped, politically, socially and even residentially by a technology owned by a very few. A technology upon which none of us who will be affected by it has had a vote, whose dangers which even its beneficiaries are warning us has the capacity to destroy, or largely damage the society into which it is being embedded.
The mantra that the voice of Pauline
Hanson repeats without cease is largely one-note. It always has been. It whines about the alleged populating of Australia by outsiders of varying, depending on the day, persuasions, skin colours, faiths, origins, diet, region of origin. But that message is wide of the mark. What is driving a spring tide of voters to One Nation is the over-riding sense that no one of the other major parties is listening to them. Of One Nation respondents, 85% said that their country is heading in the wrong direction, their net trust in politicians stands at a whopping minus 90%. They are told immigrants are the issue. For them, it isn’t. Of the One Nation respondents, 70% say they are intending to vote “to make the politicians listen”.
They have a point. When were you last visited by a politician or a political door-knocker who was more interested in what you thought rather than how you might vote? In a little while, I am going to be asked to choose from a stable of people largely unknown to me who I would like to represent me in my municipal council. None have knocked on my door, none have addressed me via The Classifieds to see what I think might be the concerns of my readers. If they do not have the time, or the inclination, to seek voters’ views, how on earth are they going to represent them? By listening only to the squeaky wheels? I know only the position of one candidate: he is not going to support any increase in council rates. Really?
Meantime the body politic chatters in the echo chamber of migration. And the media? Even our national broadcaster loiters on the edges of a serious debate about the issues which are driving voters away from the major parties and towards the One Nation mirage. One reason why there has not been a national debate on incomes, wages and investment is that it might end with those who have run this country for over 20 years admitting that they have not done a great job, realising that radical reforms are required, and that these come with significant political risk. Talking about a stalking horse like immigration is much less pregnant with risk. We can toss large numbers around without necessarily having to justify them. Focussing the debate on immigration, trying to meet One Nation on its chosen ground is a category error. For politicians it is time to read the national room and address the concerns of individuals, not those of political parties.
John Fleming II

Scroll to Top