We live in the most connected era in human history. Information is instant and nearly free, yet a large share of the public seems more willing than ever to believe things that don’t survive contact with the facts. It’s worth asking whether the same networks that make us feel informed are also being used to steer us.
Nowhere is this clearer than in Australia’s immigration debate. Ask people what is wrong with the country and a growing number will say immigration. It’s a real issue, and I’ll come back to it. But it cannot be the main problem. Pointing at newcomers is easy, and it’s convenient for those who gain from the status quo.
The squeeze is real
The anger is not irrational. Median advertised rent nationally has risen 44% over five years, according to Cotality, adding roughly $10,600 a year to the cost of renting a typical home. Many people can point to a rental that now costs far more than it did a few years ago. When rent, groceries and power climb faster than wages, people look for someone to blame, and the most visible face in the room is the newcomer.
Housing: scarce, expensive, and treated as an asset
Australia is not building enough homes. Only about 180,500 were completed in the year to June 2026, around a quarter short of the 240,000 a year the National Housing Accord requires. That is a failure of planning, approvals, construction capacity and cost, and it sits with governments and industry, not with the person renting the flat next door.
It’s tempting to say the answer is hiding in plain sight, in the empty houses. The reality is more modest. The 2021 Census counted just over a million unoccupied homes, about 10% of the total, but that share has hovered around one in ten in every census since 1981, and much of it is holiday homes, properties for sale and homes under renovation. One estimate puts long-term speculative vacancies at around 300,000 homes, roughly 3% of all housing. That’s not enough to solve the shortage, but it is a number worth acting on through measures like vacancy taxes.
The larger problem is cost. Homes exist and are still out of reach because housing has been treated as an investment before it has been treated as a place to live. Tax settings reward investors, construction costs keep climbing, and those who set policy have shown little urgency in changing any of it.
Where the money is going
Look at who is doing well. The competition regulator estimates Woolworths holds about 38% of supermarket grocery sales and Coles about 29%. After its inquiry, the ACCC concluded that Coles, Woolworths and ALDI are among the most profitable supermarket businesses among their global peers, and that their average product margins rose over five years. It also found the two big chains have limited incentive to compete hard on price. That is what a concentrated market looks like: a few players, little pressure to cut prices, and shoppers with few alternatives. Add the lobbying that shields these arrangements, and the picture is not one of immigrants draining the country. It is one of households squeezed by market power that governments have been slow to confront.
The same goes for the technology giants. Companies have taken the accumulated writing, art and knowledge of generations, built tireless automated systems on top of it, and are now selling those systems back to us, often without consent or compensation to the people who created that material. Whatever you make of how much of today’s job insecurity can be traced to this shift, it is a far better candidate for the anxiety Australians feel than the person stocking shelves at 5am.
Who is actually doing the work
Those who want fewer migrants rarely say who they’d like to fill the jobs. Temporary visa holders made up 81% of net workforce-related migration arrivals in 2025, and in accommodation and food services, recent migrants account for 14.3% of the workforce. Temporary migrants make up about 7% of the Australian workforce, and many working holiday makers and international students work in lower-paid, less-skilled roles. These are the cafés, kitchens, farms and warehouses Australians say they depend on but often don’t want to work in themselves.
The fair part of the complaint
None of this means migration is cost-free. Rapid population growth puts real pressure on housing, hospitals, schools, transport and the public service. When arrivals surge without the homes and infrastructure to match, people feel it in daily life, and that frustration is legitimate. It’s also worth noting that net overseas migration has fallen more than 45% from its post-COVID peak in 2023, yet rents remain stubbornly high. That suggests migration is one pressure among several, not the sole cause.
Notice where this argument leads. The failure is one of planning and delivery. Migrants pay taxes too, and a good share of them. If services are slow and infrastructure is late, the responsibility lies with the governments collecting those taxes, not with a fellow taxpayer. A public sector that cannot deliver on time, and has not turned the country’s wealth into visible benefits for its own citizens, is answerable for that.
Look up, not sideways
The danger of the current mood is that it takes legitimate anger and sends it sideways, at a fellow worker, instead of upward at the concentrated power and institutional failures that shape the cost of living. Immigration may be part of the story. It is not the whole story, and it is certainly not the villain. Until Australians put the pressure where it belongs, on monopolies, on lobbying, on housing and tax policy, and on the delivery of public services, prices will keep rising and the anger will keep being pointed somewhere harmless to those who profit.