Immigration is a working class issue

And it deserves representation

Australia: Built by workers

My dad was a union man. He was the secretary for the Plumbers Union Queensland, and I spent a good part of my early life at Labor Day rallies and protests. Quite literally, as a toddler I sat on the shoulders of giants: hard working family men and women, marching through the streets in solidarity, and fighting for their stake in this wonderful country. 

When I’d go back to kindergarten the next day, I’d get the other kids to join in union chants. Shouting with my fist in the air at passing cars, I didn’t really understand what the words meant, only that it was about the little guy taking on the big guy. This sentiment has stuck with me ever since. It’s guided me my whole life.

In the blood

Long ago the union movement, and the Labor Party, meant something — it really was a movement for the workers. Today it is far from what it used to be. Speaking to friends who work in the trade industry – indeed those who have been delegates themselves – they feel as disconnected from those at the top of their movement, as much as they do from politics itself. They no longer feel represented any more. This is a problem that is broadly playing out across Australia; instead of battling the political class, Labor and unions have become the political class. They stopped caring about the little guy.

There’s too many examples of this abandonment to count – from anti-worker vaccine mandates to the culturally-confusing Voice referendum, to name a couple of recent ones – but to me the biggest betrayal of the Labor Party has been on immigration. 

Labor - the supposed party for the working class - brought in 737,000 people last year. I personally know people who were evicted from their home due to the subsequent rent hikes that followed. They were thrown to the street, because landlords could get a better price in the rental market, overheating with international students, foreign workers and thousands of their family members. Almost all of my friends saw their rent go up, and their dreams of owning a home and starting a family pushed further into the horizon, perhaps never to happen. 

I know workers who – when borders were shut for COVID and workers went home – saw their pay go up while companies were desperate for workers. Now that the government — the Labor government — has brought in 1.15 million people in, real wages are back to 2009 levels. Put another way, our wages have gone backwards in 15 years. Labor was built on the back of men and women fighting for better wages, it has since abandoned that fight.

The eternal struggle

Immigration is largely a working class issue. It disproportionately affects workers, especially those who are just getting started in their career, those in precarious positions who maybe made a misstep or two in their life, and those struggling to get ahead. If you’re a young person just out of school or a punter just trying to find a job, any job: be it a truckie, hospitality worker, anything that can be considered a working class job, you are competing with more migrants than ever before. With so many people fighting for so few jobs, bosses can give the job to whoever’s willing to work for less. 

This is no small problem, the ability to earn good money, save up, live a good life and invest in your future is what this country was built on. It’s the foundation of economic progress. We were a country of battlers and strivers, who worked hard, pinched pennies, made ends meet, maybe had a drink on Friday, got back to work on Monday, and kept the country moving forward. But if you can no longer get ahead despite all your hard work, if it takes 15 years to save for a house deposit instead of four, if your wages won’t save up for anything meaningful, and you can’t even afford a bit of fun on the weekend, what is it all for? Why care about a country that doesn’t care a bit about you?

Where are the unions? Where is the Labor party? In fact, where is the Liberal Party? The tragedy isn’t just that Labor no longer represents the hard working people of Australia. It's that nobody represents them. The Liberal Party, perhaps too comfortable with big businesses and big universities, will not stand up for them — offering only the meekest criticism to current immigration levels. These guys might scream black and blue about taxes, but there is no bigger tax on workers than mass immigration. 

While more Australians go homeless, many more will become politically homeless. If they cannot provide for their family, they will not start a family. If they’re not moving forward, the country will not move forward. Mass immigration is killing the working class, and nobody is shouting in the street about it. This is a failure of Australian democracy, and it will lead to the failure of Australia. Worker, stand up.

You built this country, never ever give it up.

Jordan Knight runs Migration Watch Australia, and is a Director of the National Conservative Institute of Australia.