For decades, Australia’s political centre remained resilient even as governments changed and parties fought over tax, industrial relations, migration and national security. Parliamentary government, a regulated market economy, multiculturalism, a social safety net and the United States alliance provided broad foundations for political life.

That consensus is under pressure. The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council’s State of the Housing System 2026 reports that, in 2025, a new rental lease required 33.1 per cent of median household income, while repayments on a new mortgage required 45.9 per cent. Saving a 20 per cent deposit took an estimated 11.2 years, assuming a household saved 15 per cent of its gross median income annually. These figures describe a generation increasingly unsure that work will provide the security enjoyed by their parents.

Migration has consequently become entangled with housing, infrastructure and cost-of-living anxiety. One Nation’s appeal is a warning to mainstream parties. A Roy Morgan survey conducted on 7–13 September 2026 recorded its primary support at 25 per cent. One poll does not establish an electoral outcome, but support at that level deserves serious attention. The response should neither imitate One Nation nor condemn everyone considering voting for it. It should address why voters are listening.

The anxiety behind One Nation’s support

There is nothing inherently racist about arguing for lower immigration or questioning migration policy. Democracy requires difficult subjects to be discussed. Policy criticism becomes something different when people are reduced to their race, religion or ancestry, or when their equal place in Australian society is questioned on those grounds.

Mainstream parties should not assume that One Nation voters endorse every position associated with the party. People unable to find housing are not xenophobic because they ask whether population growth is exceeding construction. Citizens concerned about social cohesion are not extremists because they believe migration should involve responsibilities as well as rights.

One Nation’s proposal for net-negative migration raises serious economic and labour-market questions. Yet rejecting the prescription does not answer the anxiety creating demand for it. Australia needs to improve housing supply and coordinate population growth with infrastructure and services. These objectives can coexist without claiming that migrants caused the housing crisis.

The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council’s August 2026 Quarterly Report records improving building approvals and commencements, but projects that the 1.2 million-home National Housing Accord target will be reached in the December quarter of 2030. That is later than the original mid-2029 deadline, and the forecast remains uncertain. Construction costs and financing conditions continue to threaten delivery. Households, meanwhile, do not live in forecasts. They live in homes they increasingly struggle to rent or buy.

Population growth can intensify competition for available homes when construction cannot keep pace. But reducing the argument to migration overlooks the need to address planning, infrastructure, construction capacity and affordable housing. Labor cannot defeat populism merely by disputing its explanations. It must convince Australians that democratic government can manage the pressures shaping their lives.

Migration as a social contract

Australia needs a migration debate centred on sustainable scale, necessary skills, housing and infrastructure capacity, visa integrity and civic participation. These are questions of public policy, not tests of whether particular ethnic or religious communities belong.

Migration should be understood as a social contract. People who come to Australia reasonably seek security, education, employment, freedom and a future for their children. Australia is equally entitled to ask what they are prepared to contribute, while ensuring that they have a fair opportunity to do so.

Contribution cannot be reduced to taxation. Parents, volunteers, students, entrepreneurs, nurses, construction workers and researchers contribute in different ways. Receiving welfare during hardship is not a moral failure. The safety net exists because people experience unemployment, illness, disability and misfortune.

Membership of a democracy nevertheless carries obligations. Residents and citizens should respect the law, the equal rights of women and men, freedom of religion and non-belief, democratic institutions and the equal citizenship of others. They should make a reasonable effort to participate and contribute where they can. Citizenship is more than a passport; it is membership in a political community. Those obligations apply to established Australians as well as newcomers.

This does not require cultural uniformity. An Australian may speak Mandarin at home, pray in a mosque, attend church, celebrate Diwali or observe no religion. Integration should support participation in a shared civic life while protecting cultural and religious freedom.

Claims that migrants primarily consume welfare also require evidence. The Parliamentary Budget Office’s 2026–27 Medium-Term Budget Outlook finds that migrants, on average, have a more favourable Commonwealth fiscal impact than the population overall, partly because of their age profile and education and early healthcare costs incurred overseas. It also recognises that state and territory budgets face a different mix of service and infrastructure pressures. Fiscal benefits do not remove the need to plan for local capacity; they strengthen the case for using those benefits responsibly.

Labor’s case for gradualism

One Nation’s support should prompt Labor to examine whether its policies are connecting with voters’ experience. Attacking the party at every opportunity can leave the underlying concerns unanswered. Some anxieties are exaggerated by populist rhetoric; others reflect real hardship. A government that refuses to distinguish between them risks losing people who are not ideological extremists.

There is much to respect in the Albanese government’s cautious, incremental and institutionally minded approach. Structural policy rarely works on an electoral news cycle. Housing requires land, approval, finance, infrastructure, skilled labour and construction. Education reforms may take years to reveal their effects. Energy transitions require grids, generation and investment.

Gradualism, however, contains its own danger. Patience can become complacency, and process can become an excuse. Governments can focus so heavily on future solutions that they lose sight of present hardship.

Housing illustrates the dilemma. The Council’s August report shows progress in the construction pipeline alongside a delayed national delivery forecast. Labor deserves recognition for pursuing reform, but voters are entitled to ask when it will improve their lives. Housing policy should remove long-term obstacles to supply and be judged by whether rents and purchase costs become more manageable relative to incomes. Moderation earns confidence when people can see results.

Foreign policy and Australian agency

Foreign policy offers a stronger case for Labor’s pragmatism. Australia’s position between the United States and China is difficult. The American alliance is central to its security, while China remains its largest trading partner. Neither relationship eliminates the need for independent Australian judgment.

Penny Wong’s formulation, ‘cooperate where we can, disagree where we must’, captures a sensible approach to China. Engagement does not require pretending that disagreements over security, coercion or human rights have disappeared. Australia should challenge conduct contrary to its interests while maintaining channels through which disagreements can be managed.

Australia does not need to pretend that China is a liberal democracy. Nor should disagreement become permanent hostility. Equally, alliance with the United States should not require intellectual subordination to Washington. A confident ally must retain the capacity to assess its own interests and express disagreement.

This is not equidistance. It is an effort to preserve Australian agency. Stronger relationships with Southeast Asia, the Pacific, Japan, India, Korea and Europe can widen Australia’s choices. Labor deserves credit for treating diplomacy as a means of managing difficult realities rather than turning every difference into an ideological confrontation.

Gaza and the limits of pragmatism

The caution that serves Australia well in managing China becomes more difficult in Israel and Palestine. Australia recognised the State of Palestine on 21 September 2025, affirming its commitment to a two-state solution and calling for a ceasefire and the release of hostages. It has also imposed targeted sanctions in response to violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, including further measures announced in June 2026.

Those steps should be acknowledged. They do not end the debate about whether Australia’s commitment to international law is applied consistently. If law matters when adversaries violate it, it must also matter when partners or allies are credibly accused of violations. Allegations require evidence and fair assessment; political friendship should not determine the standard applied.

Hamas’s attacks on civilians were indefensible, and Israeli civilians have a right to security. Palestinian civilians possess the same human worth. Criticism of the Netanyahu government is not inherently antisemitic, and condemnation of Hamas does not require denying Palestinian national rights. Democratic debate must hold these propositions together.

Recognition and diplomatic statements matter. Where violations are established, Australia should be prepared to consider proportionate consequences, including targeted sanctions where appropriate. Otherwise, its defence of an international order governed by rules risks appearing selective. Such inconsistency can undermine the credibility of its arguments about international law elsewhere.

Australia should speak clearly when evidence supports doing so, including when the government concerned is a friend. This is a defence of the rule of law and civilian protection, compatible with opposing antisemitism and respecting Jewish Australians.

A confident political centre

Australia’s choice is more complicated than Labor versus One Nation or multiculturalism versus nationalism. One Nation speaks to genuine anxiety, but its divisive prescriptions should be challenged. Labor offers more sophisticated policy, but that policy can appear distant from voters’ immediate experience. Urgency requires judgment; judgment must lead to delivery.

Australia needs migration settings that account for housing and service capacity without blaming people for their race or religion. It needs multiculturalism grounded in equal rights and shared civic responsibilities, and a welfare state that supports people through hardship. Housing reform should tackle the barriers to building while delivering measurable improvements in affordability.

The American alliance should remain strong without ending Australian independence. China should be engaged without naivety. Israeli security and Palestinian life should both matter, and international law should apply to adversaries and friends.

One Nation’s support should therefore be understood as a warning to the political establishment. Populism grows in the distance between what institutions promise and what citizens experience. Closing that distance is Labor’s challenge.

Australia needs government that can be moderate without becoming timid, firm without becoming cruel, pragmatic without abandoning principle, and patient without becoming passive. The political centre will survive the age of populism only if it shows that moderation is compatible with courage, delivery and clear judgment.

Colin Ma, November 2026

Colin Ma is an Adelaide-based journalist and policy commentator with professional experience in journalism, editing and research.