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 May 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.
Back then the union movement, and the Labor Party, meant something. Today it is a shadow of its former self. Speaking to friends who work in the trade industry – indeed those who have been union 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 has become the political class. They stopped caring about the little guy.
There’s too many examples of this abandonment to count – from vaccine mandates to the Voice to Parliament 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 homes 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 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 young 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 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, where has that fight gone?
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, 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, 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 is 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. 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 12 years to save for a house 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 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 good, honest hard hard-working people that make up Australia. It’s that nobody represents them. The Liberal Party, perhaps too comfortable with big businesses and big universities, won’t sufficiently stand up for them. 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. This is a failure of Australian democracy, and it will lead to the failure of Australia if not remedied.
Jordan Knight is Adviser to Independent NSW MP Rod Roberts, runs Migration Watch Australia, and is Director of National Conservative Institute of Australia.
