For the last few months, Redbridge Group’s Co-founder and Director Strategy and Analytics, Kos Samras, has been explaining how and why multicultural Australia, especially Indian Australians, has been/would/should be voting for the Labor Party and why the Liberals should be worried about it.

After reading the latest analysis published here on Substack, I sat down to scrutinise it. Please do read it before you go any further with my rebuttal.

In this piece, Kos Samaras’ analysis rests on a flawed assumption: that multicultural Australians vote primarily through identity politics and permanently view parties like One Nation through the lens of race. That may have once held true for some voters, but the reality in suburbs like Tarneit, Truganina, Point Cook, Box Hill, Dandenong or Werribee is far more complex and far more Australian.

The migrant Indian Australian family in Tarneit, stuck in traffic for two hours every day, is no different from the Anglo family in Bundaberg worried about power bills. The Chinese Australian small business owner in Box Hill, dealing with crime and collapsing retail confidence, does not experience the cost-of-living crisis differently because they speak Mandarin at home. The Filipino nurse waiting seven hours with patients in Victorian hospitals does not suddenly become politically “immune” to anger at government failure because she migrated here.

That is the analytical blind spot in this piece.

The article repeatedly frames multicultural Australians as if they exist outside mainstream Australian frustrations. But migrants are not living in some parallel Australia. They are facing the same:
   •   housing crisis
   •   youth crime concerns
   •   hospital blowouts
   •   congestion nightmares
   •   energy bill pain
   •   community safety fears
   •   rising antisemitism
   •   violent extremism concerns

And increasingly, many feel the Victorian Labor government has failed on all of them.

The claim that multicultural suburbs form an automatic anti-One Nation “wall” also ignores how migrant communities themselves have experienced terrorism, extremism and insecurity.

Indian Australians, Greek Australians, Jewish Australians, Filipino Australians, Nepali Australians, Assyrians, Vietnamese Australians and countless others did not arrive from peaceful utopias untouched by violence. Many fled terrorism, sectarian conflict, authoritarianism or instability.

To suggest these communities instinctively dismiss concerns around extremism or national security because they are migrants, misunderstands migrant psychology entirely.

A Hindu Australian family worried about Islamist extremism after repeated global terror attacks is not “far-right.”
A Jewish Australian worried after synagogue attacks is not “authoritarian.”
A Greek or Assyrian Christian concerned about religious persecution is not “racially anxious.”
A Chinese Australian angry about crime and social disorder is not automatically voting based on multicultural solidarity.

These are ordinary Australians reacting to ordinary concerns.

The article also reduces multicultural voters into caricatures:
   •   the Lebanese apprentice
   •   the Indian software engineer
   •   the Hazara business owner

as though ethnicity itself permanently determines political behaviour.

But second-generation migrants increasingly vote based on aspiration, taxation, safety, infrastructure and competence, not historical grievance politics from the 1990s.

The Indian Australian Punjabi truck driver in Truganina cares less about Pauline Hanson’s comments from thirty years ago and more about whether he can afford fuel, whether his children can buy a house, and why ambulances are ramped outside hospitals.

The Indian Australian software engineer in Parramatta may dislike racial rhetoric, but that does not mean they are satisfied with Labor governments overseeing collapsing infrastructure, soaring migration without planning, or worsening public services.

Kos Samaras is correct about one thing: Australia is politically realigning.

But the realignment is not simply “regional Anglo Australia versus multicultural urban Australia.” That framework is outdated and increasingly patronising.

What is actually emerging is a divide between:
   •   Australians who feel economically and culturally secure
and
   •   Australians who feel ignored, overburdened and unheard

That includes migrants too.

The assumption that multicultural Australians will remain permanently loyal to Labor because of anti-racism politics underestimates how deeply cost-of-living pressures and community safety concerns cut across ethnic lines.

In Victoria, especially, Labor’s traditional hold over migrant communities is weakening because many migrants no longer see themselves primarily as migrants. They see themselves as Australians paying massive mortgages, sitting in gridlocked traffic, struggling with overcrowded schools, and watching governments fail basic governance tests.

The political future of suburbs like Tarneit, Point Cook, Cranbourne, Box Hill or Dandenong will not be decided by academic theories about “openness-coded voters.” It will be decided by whether governments can deliver:
   •   safe streets
   •   affordable housing
   •   functioning hospitals
   •   reliable infrastructure
   •   social cohesion
   •   and economic opportunity

If they cannot, multicultural voters will move politically just like every other Australian voter does.

Not because they are becoming “anti-migrant” or “anti-Muslim.”
But because they are becoming frustrated citizens.

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