Former Labor senator and long-time demographer John Black has studied lifetime voting trends in Australia since 1966. As he pointed out to me on Thursday, there are a few times in voters’ lives when they become especially susceptible to changing their voting habits. One of these is when they are relatively young, saddled with a heavy mortgage – or struggling to get one – and living as a family on a single income with very young children. At this time of their lives, they become what Black calls “volatile voters”. This, the demographer and political strategist says, is why Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is so focused on delivering universal childcare. It’s a policy that offers a lifeline of sorts to voters who grab it by voting Labor.
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Black confirms the observation to which Price was referring, that Indian voters – along with Chinese and Filipino voters – are more likely to vote left. But – and this is a very big and stupid “but” for the Coalition to miss – the reason for this is that these migrants tend to be younger, on average, than the broader Australian population. As they age, these hard-working and aspirational migrants tend to accumulate wealth and, as Black has written in The Australian Financial Review, they often favour non-government schools and private healthcare. This makes them, Black tells me, “a natural constituency for the Liberal Party as they get older”. But only if – and Black is sceptical on this front – the Liberals get their act together.
In other words, the Liberals are standing in their own way. Excuses and rationalisations blind them to the electoral opportunities staring them in the face, if they only developed decent policy. Some right-wing fringes are drifting into skin-colour reductionism because their paranoia renders them unable to see that these migrant groups integrate well into Australian culture and are proud and protective of the national and family values that conservatives favour. It’s easier to blame immigrants for sluggish infrastructure growth than to recognise the opportunity they present to reinvigorate a sense of nationhood based on patriotic values.
After US President Donald Trump’s victory in 2024, Musk quickly discovered there were repercussions from the frenzy he had helped whip up around saving America from a one-party state created by illegal immigrants who were supposedly, despite being non-citizens, voting Democrat in large numbers. The MAGA base wasn’t just concerned about immigrants coming illegally but those who had arrived through legal channels as well. MAGA influencer Laura Loomer spoke for many in the movement when she said “it’s not racist against Indians to want the original MAGA policies I voted for”. “I voted for a reduction in H-1B visas,” she insisted, “not an extension.”
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Musk found himself having to defend the H-1B talent visas, which his companies use to bring people with desperately needed engineering skills into America. But for many MAGAs, the more successful the migrant, the more threatening they are. The immigration time bomb is ticking away within the Trump Republicans, who will eventually find themselves turning away right-aligned voters because of a moment of politically expedient madness.
The lesson for Price and her colleagues is unmistakeable, should they care to heed it: when it focuses on politics without policy substance, the right creates a monster it can’t control.
Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens and, on Friday, she was announced as a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies.
