51% of Australians Are Second‑Generation, Yet Parties Still Trade in a ‘Native Aussie’ Myth
On a sunny Saturday in a sleepy suburb, a man in a cheap T‑shirt proudly declared to a crowd that his mum was from Fiji, his dad from Vietnam, and he was 100% Australian. The crowd laughed, a few clapped, and the man left the stage with a grin that could have been mistaken for a victory salute.
It turns out that 51 per cent of Australians are indeed children of immigrant parents – a fact that should make the nation feel a little more inclusive. Yet both major parties are still busy selling the same old “Australia as an immigration nation” storyline, and they’re doing it with the enthusiasm of a man who just found out his neighbour has a cat.
The “Immigration Nation” narrative has become a sort of political Easter egg, a way to remind voters that the country is built on the backs of refugees and migrants. But the parties have missed a critical detail: the backbone of that narrative is made up of the very people who are themselves second‑generation, not first‑generation newcomers.
Instead of acknowledging this, politicians keep pitching the idea of a monolithic Aussie heritage – an idealised version that looks a lot like a white, Anglo‑Saxon postcard. It’s the sort of story that feels comfortable on a campaign poster but looks ridiculous when you stare at the census data.
Politicians are caught in a loop that could be described as a never‑ending carousel of “I’m Australian” handshakes that all end in the same old story. They talk about the Aussie dream as if it’s something that only a particular group can achieve, even though the dream itself is being lived by the very people they’re ignoring.
The public, on the other hand, has taken to pointing out the irony. When politicians try to sell the same old narrative, the electorate sometimes laughs, sometimes claps, but always asks for a more honest story that actually reflects their own identities.
The media, which often acts as a mouthpiece for the parties, keeps rehashing the same clichés. Headlines about “Australia’s multicultural future” are as common as headlines about “Australia’s future” itself – and both feel a little flat.
The real irony is that the electorate is half immigrant, yet the story sold is one of a monolithic heritage that doesn’t exist in the census book. It’s a mismatch that could only be solved by acknowledging that the nation is literally built from the children of those who came.
Maybe it’s time for a new narrative – one that sells Australia as a country that is born from itself, where being second‑generation is the new normal and the old story is just a footnote in history.