What Did Attendees at the ‘March for Australia’ Rallies on Immigration Have to Say?

SYDNEY—Thousands of Australians again took to the streets across 18 cities and towns in protest against government migration policy and struggling infrastructure and social cohesion issues.

The “March for Australia” 2.0 was held Oct. 19 with organiser Bec Freedom—not her real name but a pseudonym—pointing to problems with housing.

“I can see that we have a serious immigration problem. We’ve got families that are homeless. We’ve got migrants that are homeless,” she told The Epoch Times after the march in Hyde Park, Sydney. “So we can’t even house the people that we’ve got. We can’t house the migrants. We need to put a stop to that.”

Freedom, originally from Melbourne and a mother of three, said she thinks public discussion on migration since the last event on Aug. 31 has increased.

“We will keep speaking. We will keep having these conversations, but unfortunately, those labels that we get given … It’s going to stop people from having those discussions.”

Freedom and organisers have been linked to the “far-right” and white nationalist ideologies like “neo-Nazism” by some media outlets, commentators, and political leaders. The attendance of Thomas Sewell, founder of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network, at the August Melbourne rally also muddied the waters.

In response, organisers have developed a range of tactics to counteract what they perceive to be unfair media coverage.

For example, exact details of the marches and speakers are revealed at the last minute on social media, while organisers use pseudonyms rather than their real names.

In fact, many attendees were reluctant to give their real names to The Epoch Times when asked to provide comment, likely due to general distrust toward media.

Attendee Says He Just Wants Controlled Migration

Blake, a young man in the Sydney crowd who withheld his surname, said he mainly worries about housing prices.

“It’s destroying our country. House prices are too high. We’re priced out on buying houses,” he told The Epoch Times.

“When you have the minimum wage at $65,000, you can’t get a loan for a million dollars for these homes at the moment.”

Blake said he was “born here my whole life” and that he was not against immigration.

“I just want controlled numbers, and I want to know what the true numbers are coming in at the moment,” he said. “It needs to be thoroughly reviewed.”

“We need controlled immigration. There’s too many illegals coming in as well, and there’s not enough homes being built. So that’s why homes are a million plus everywhere you go.”

Emily, Blake’s partner, said she hopes to see more “equal speech.”

“Not just like one person’s side of speech. So like being respectful, but also hearing other people’s side,” she said.

“It’s not racist to love your country. It’s not racist to want controlled immigration in your country,” concurred Blake, referring to many other countries also seeing immigration protests, including Japan and the U.K.

Cindy Gilbert, a support worker with a teaching background, expressed concern about the strain on Australia’s welfare system.

“If you guys come over here because you’re wealthy enough to come over and study here, or you get a scholarship or whatever, that’s different. But if you come over here, should our taxpayer money pay your welfare? It shouldn’t, but we do. We pay a lot of people,” she told The Epoch Times.

Former MP and Leader on Infrastructure Pressure

Former Liberal Party MP Craig Kelly blamed the Albanese government for importing “a net number of 1.4 million new people into this country in his first term.

“What are the adverse consequences? We see families living in their cars. We see Australians living under bridges. We see the price of rent through the roof, where the rent today, the average cost of your rent as a percentage of your wage, has never been higher in our nation’s history.”

Rod Caddies, the WA state leader for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party shared a similar view.

“No one’s blaming mass immigration as the only problem, but that is a big contributing factor to our problems,” he told The Epoch Times in Perth.

“You can’t bring in hundreds of thousands of people when we’re not building hundreds of thousands of houses, and we don’t have like the infrastructure in our hospitals, our schools, our roads, everything.”

Counter-Protests Erupt in Violence in Melbourne

Counter-protests were organised in response to March for Australia with Brisbane participants attempting to confront protestors in Queen Street Mall. The Brisbane group represented a wide array of causes from pro-Palestinian supporters to pro-Marxists and communists.

In Melbourne, Victoria Police Commander Wayne Cheesman lambasted left-wing agitators like the “United Against Racism: Migrants and Refugees Are Welcome” who were trying to reach the immigration protest, and who came to “pick a fight with police.”

Two officers were injured in the confrontation.

“The March for Australia group—they were peaceful, engaging and followed instructions. The others came with masks, hoodies and umbrellas, throwing rocks and hiding behind barriers. They came to harm our members, and it’s got to stop,” Cheesman said in a strongly worded press conference.

“The people that came to pick the fight with police were the issue-motivated groups on the left,” he said.

Cheesman said there were about 40-50 “hardcore protestors” who were trying to harm officers.

“What concerns me though, is they are standing with the larger group, and the other group are not intervening, they’re not telling them to stop, so in a way, they’re offering their support which is unacceptable.”

Craig English contributed to this report.