Why anti-immigration rallies across Australia are targeting Indians

Australia witnessed a number of anti-immigration rallies on Sunday (August 31), particularly targeting the growing population of Indian migrants. The Australian government criticised these protests, saying that the “brand of far-right activism grounded in racism and ethnocentrism” has no place in the country.

Australia has reported a surge in right-wing extremism, including protests by neo-Nazis. The government linked the latest demonstrations to neo-Nazis.

Let’s take a closer look.

Anti-immigration rallies in Australia

Thousands of protesters gathered in Australia’s largest cities, including Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, Perth, and others, to demonstrate against immigration.

About 5,000 to 8,000 people attended the ‘March for Australia’ rally in Sydney, with many draped in Australian flags, reported the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

A counter-rally by the Refugee Action Coalition, a community activist organisation, was also held, with the two sides confronting each other in Melbourne.

“Our event shows the depth of disgust and anger about the far-right agenda of March For Australia,” a coalition spokesperson said in a statement.

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Bob Katter, the leader of a small populist party, attended a March for Australia rally in Queensland.

The ‘March for Australia’ website states, “Our streets have seen growing displays of anti-Australian hatred, foreign conflicts, and disintegrating trust, whilst mass migration has torn at the bonds that held our communities together.” “This march is a stand for the people, culture, and nation that built Australia — and for our right to decide its future,” it added.

The group posted on X on Saturday that the protests aimed to do “what the mainstream politicians never have the courage to do: demand an end to mass immigration.”

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Its manifesto and flyers read, “More Indians in five years, than Greeks and Italians in 100”, adding, “This isn’t a slight cultural change, it’s a replacement plain and simple.”

In Sydney, March for Australia protester Glenn Allchin told Reuters he wanted a “slowdown” in immigration.

“It’s about our country bursting at the seams and our government bringing more and more people in. Our kids struggling to get homes, our hospitals, we have to wait seven hours, our roads, the lack of roads,” Allchin said.

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Australia govt condemns anti-immigration rallies

The Australian government denounced the anti-immigration rallies, linking them to neo-Nazis.

The Anthony Albanese government opposed the protests planned for the weekend. “All Australians, no matter their heritage, have the right to feel safe and welcome in our community,” the statement said.

“We absolutely condemn the March for Australia rally that’s going on today. It is not about increasing social harmony,” Murray Watt, a senior minister in the Labor government, told Sky News television.

“We don’t support rallies like this that are about spreading hate and that are about dividing our community,” Watt said, adding that they were “organised and promoted” by neo-Nazi groups.

Tony Burke, Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs, said, “There is no place in our country for people who seek to divide and undermine our social cohesion. Nothing could be less Australian.”

How Indian population grew in Australia

Australia is one of the world’s biggest “immigrant nations”, with the British forming the biggest migrant group.

The country also has a strong Indian population. According to the 2021 census, about 9,76,000 people in Australia have Indian roots, making up over three per cent of the total 26 million (2.6 crores) population.

Indians have become the second-largest migrant group in Australia, second only to the English.

Early immigrants reportedly started arriving in Australia in the 1800s as labourers or servants of British colonisers coming from India.

After the racist White Australia policy that restricted non-white immigration was scrapped in the 1970s, a wave of Indian engineers began migrating to the country. In the 1990s, Australia saw an influx of skilled migrants, especially IT workers, from India.

“Even then, Australia remained choosy with the kind of migrants it welcomed; only skilled migrants, like tech workers, doctors, nurses and academics were welcomed, and that too on a very small scale,” Jayant Bapat, a researcher who has co-authored a book on the Indian diaspora in Australia, told BBC in 2023.

In 2006, the John Howard-led government made it easier for Indian students to obtain permanent residency, making studying in Australia an attractive option for them. “Indian students still form a very large part of temporary migrants. After they get their degrees, many of them are allowed to settle in Australia,” Bapat said.

The number of Indians has since grown in Australia. As per The Sydney Morning Herald, there were only 156,000 people with Indian ancestry in 2001. This jumped to 242,000 in 2006 and further to 474,000 in 2011.

By 2016, the figure had reached 619,000. The Indian community is the fastest-growing overseas group in Australia and is expected to overtake the Brits in the coming years.

Australia has a young Indian population, with most first-generation migrants from India aged between 25 and 44 years old. They are also well-educated, as 68 per cent of Indians who arrived since 2006 already have an undergraduate degree or higher, according to analysis by researchers from The University of Queensland.

Employment rate is also high among the Indian diaspora in Australia. About 85.3 per cent of Indian-born migrants work, compared to an employment rate of 80 per cent for migrants overall, as per the analysis.

With inputs from agencies