A fresh wave of anti-immigrant protests across Australia has taken an unsettling turn, with South Asian communities, particularly Indians, being targeted through racist rhetoric, misinformation, and violent attacks.
From Melbourne to Sydney, far-right demonstrators have framed migrants as scapegoats for the country’s housing crisis, invoking slogans steeped in xenophobia and white nationalism.
Yet these claims collapse under scrutiny: migration, while contributing modestly to housing demand, is far from the root cause of Australia’s spiralling affordability crisis.
More disturbingly, this rhetoric stands in stark contrast to the country’s own colonial legacy, one in which settlers from Europe displaced indigenous people and claimed Australia as their own.
Today’s anti-migrant backlash is not just a social flashpoint, but a revealing reflection of unresolved tensions between Australia’s multicultural present and its colonial past.
Here’s a closer look at what’s unfolding, what’s fueling the rhetoric, and what the evidence really says.
Rallies targeting Indian diaspora
While framed as a protest against government immigration policy and rising living costs, the events were heavily influenced by far-right groups and featured overtly racist messaging — particularly targeting South Asian migrants.
The March for Australia protests in late August notably featured racist messaging targeting South Asian migrants.
It was organised under the banner of protecting Australian values and “taking back the country” and framed as a protest against government immigration policy and rising living costs.
But in cities like Melbourne and Sydney, the marches were marked by white nationalist slogans, neo-Nazi salutes, and violent incidents, including assaults on Indian Australians and attacks on indigenous protest sites.
People in Melbourne and Sydney reported physical assaults on individuals of Indian heritage, violent attacks on train platforms and threatening online abuse.
In Melbourne, neo-Nazis attacked Camp Sovereignty, an Indigenous people's protest site, injuring women and invoking slogans like “white power” and “white man’s land”, reported The Guardian.
Protesters blame immigration for housing crisis
Protesters have seized on migration figures, or inflated border arrival numbers, to claim Australia is suffering under "record-high" immigration despite net overseas migration actually falling by 37 percent from a 2022–23 peak of 538,000 to 341,000 by December 2024, as per federal government figures cited in The Guardian.
Political leaders, including the Coalition, Australia’s main centre-right party alliance, and Pauline Hanson, a right-wing populist known for her anti-immigration stance, have echoed housing-related anxieties tied to immigration.
Meanwhile, the Albanese government has reaffirmed its skilled migration cap at 185,000 for 2025-26, facing pushback over short-term infrastructure strain.
Is blaming migration for housing pressure justified?
Migration does contribute to housing demand, but it is not the primary cause of the crisis.
Experts highlight decades of poor policy, investor tax incentives, underbuilding, zoning restrictions, and a chronic shortage of social housing as root causes.
A University of South Australia study (2017–2024) found no significant link between the number of international students and rising rents — often, rents increased without student numbers rising.
Other analyses critique this scapegoating: the housing market is driven by profits, not shortages, with developers sometimes leaving properties vacant to sustain high prices.
Some data shows modest effects: immigration may raise housing prices by around 0.6 to 0.9 percentage points annually, depending on region, but this is smaller than the typical annual price growth of about 5 percent.
A 2025 analysis notes that continuing with past supply trends, net migration contributed to a shortfall of approximately 79,000 homes over the next five years, driving pressure, but not alone the root cause.
The irony of blame
Blaming migrants, especially communities of colour, for housing woes contradicts Australia’s own settler-colonial history.
European colonisation from 1788 onward led to Indigenous dispossession, yet today, migrants from South Asia are framed as threats to the “Australian dream”.
This pattern echoes past anti-Asian campaigns, like the “Blainey debate” and the One Nation movement, which argued for slowing Asian immigration in the name of social cohesion.
Now, a neo-colonial logic blames the newest arrivals for systemic problems that stem from colonial governance and neoliberal housing markets.
