Voters rejected migration as an election issue in 2025. How many times have politicans and the media misread the room?

There’s been a strain of equivocation regarding the “March for Australia” over the weekend. Everyone pretty much agrees that the Nazis who spoke and cheered at the Melbourne rally are bad. But outside of that? Whether there are lots of decent people out there with mainstream concerns about immigration is being hotly debated.

Political leaders were quick to nod to this cohort, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese telling the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas, “There’s always good people who will turn up to demonstrate their views about particular issues”, and Opposition Leader Sussan Ley saying to parliament that the weekend’s rallies were “attended by people of goodwill, but hijacked by violent neo-Nazis spouting hate and racism”.

This sense that these rallies were just a more extreme expression of a general will of the Australian people was reinforced by the commentariat. For example, Nick Cater argued in The Australian that it was part of a necessary conversation about multiculturalism as a whole: “Rather than impugn the motives of those who marched, the political class should ask searching questions about why ordinary people with families and busy lives feel compelled to march at all”.

But is migration really a central concern for voters? At the May polls this year, the nation decimated the Coalition, voting out Peter Dutton, who had used his budget reply last May to promise a drastic slash to migration over four years to make available more than 100,000 homes. He eventually muddied the waters on this policy, as was his wont, but consistently insisted the Coalition was “not going to tolerate a situation where young Australians can’t find rental accommodation, or have no chance of ownership” on account of migration.

It got us thinking about how often the media and politicians portray an issue as a touchstone for the vast majority of voters, only for the biggest test of that sentiment — an election — to prove otherwise.

2025

The defining issues were supposed to be: Donald Trump, antisemitism and Gaza. In the US, the return of an increasingly arch-conservative and authoritarian Trump administration was supposed to embolden Australia’s hard right. And the Coalition, with a combative, race-baiting leader like Peter Dutton — who had proved so brutally effective at a negative campaign during the debate over an Indigenous Voice to Parliament — was to run Labor to an uncomfortably close result, or possibly even a narrow victory.

Alongside this, the horror in Gaza was supposed to squeeze the Albanese government from both directions. From the right came accusations that the government’s apparently insufficient support for Israel was fuelling antisemitism. From the left, there was horror at a lack of meaningful action pushing back on Israel’s relentless slaughter in Gaza.

What happened instead: Labor won so easily — so, so easily — that Dutton was turfed out of his seat and the Greens, whose vote dispersed rather than hugely dropped, lost three-quarters of their lower house representation, including leader Adam Bandt.

2022

The defining issues were supposed to be: Government responses to COVID and the risks of electing independents. Anti-lockdown and anti-vax sentiment had dominated public life over the previous two years. News Corp ran extremely hard on the integrity of the teal independents.

What happened instead: Labor won easily, aided by the teals and then prime minister Scott Morrison’s absolutely rancid vibes. Support for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and other far-right populist parties that had run hard on criticism of vaccine and lockdown policies hit a ceiling during the 2022 election — all this despite Palmer’s $123 million spend, the most of any party in 2022.

Double shot: Victoria was all of the above, but times a million. The media ran an increasingly unhinged and conspiratorial campaign against then premier “Dictator” Dan Andrews. Labor won even more comfortably than it had prior.

2019

The defining issue was supposed to be: After years of sniping at the “Rudd-Gillard-Rudd” chaos under Labor, the Liberals produced their own internal chaos by knifing two sitting prime ministers in roughly three years. The Coalition looked indulgent, out of touch, and utterly unfit for government. Labor’s big policy agenda, meanwhile, was supposed to illustrate that they were the adults who could bring back effective policymaking to Canberra.

What happened instead: Scott Morrison produced his “miracle” win of 2019. The media had underestimated just how little Bill Shorten did for voters, and just how many risks Labor had taken with its big, pricey platform.

2016

The defining issue was supposed to be: Everyone thought Malcolm Turnbull was super cool and Bill Shorten was a total dork, and the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd chaos was far too close in the rear-view mirror for anything other than a comfortable Liberal victory.

What happened instead: The Liberals barely scraped in after a long and low-energy campaign.

1993

The defining issue was supposed to be: Is 1993 the origin of the “losing the unlosable” formulation? In the early 1990s, Australia endured a serious recession, and the Labor government that had been in power since 1983 looked insular and fractious when then treasurer Paul Keating rolled prime minister Bob Hawke in late 1991. Polls consistently had the Liberal Party ahead in the lead-up to 1993.

What happened instead: “The sweetest victory of all“. As Robert Manne wrote in the aftermath of the election: “Australian political history tells us that there are two circumstances which turn voters against a government: a serious split in cabinet or a sudden economic downturn. During the Keating government, both conditions were amply fulfilled. And yet the Liberal Party lost seats to Labor.”

Many commentators noted in 2019 the similarity to 1993: an “unlosable” election lost on a big, detailed policy platform that gave a new incumbent the chance to direct the target away from himself.