Here in the land down under, where the iron ore flows like wine and the gas fields whisper promises of endless prosperity, but do not deliver to Aussies, a quiet revolution is bubbling up from the suburbs. It's not armed with pitchforks or manifestos penned in ivory towers, but with flyers, megaphones, and a stubborn refusal to swallow the Kool-Aid of endless growth. The March for Australia, those unassuming gatherings of everyday Aussies fed up with the housing squeeze, wage stagnation, and a migration tsunami that feels more like a flood, is quietly morphing into something bigger. It's becoming the de facto opposition. Not to the tired Left-Right charade, but to what I'll call "Albo Globalism": a cocktail of mass migration, net-zero piety, and elite self-preservation that prioritises global applause over local livelihoods.

Leith van Onselen's sharp takedown in Macrobusiness nailed it: the Labor-Liberal "uni-party" has institutionalised a system where the top 20%, cushioned by resource rents and real estate windfalls, govern for their own reflections in the mirror. Voters? Mere extras in the production. But as the next March gears up for Australia Day, it's clear these protests aren't just venting steam. They're coalescing into a visible, voter-driven counterforce, filling the void left by a Coalition too spineless to challenge the script. I unpack why this evolution matters, and why it might just be the spark Australia needs.

The Uni-Party's Grand Illusion: Growth at Any Cost

Picture this: Since the May 2025 federal election, Anthony Albanese's government has overseen a net overseas migration (NOM) bonanza that makes Kevin Rudd's "Big Australia" look like a kiddie pool party. We're talking 1.2 million arrivals in the first term alone, 70% more than Rudd's peak. Toss in 10% of the population on "temporary" visas (nearly a million "students," 400,000 on bridging visas), and you've got a recipe for punishing locals with skyrocketing rents, crushed productivity, and a welfare system stretched thinner than a barista's patience on a Monday morning.

Yet, from the Canberra bubble, this isn't a bug, it's a feature. Albanese dubs it "progressive patriotism" with "strong borders," while Treasurer Jim Chalmers spins yarns about how it's all fuelling "global competition." Tony Burke, the Home Affairs minister moonlighting as a fib machine, claims he's slashed migration by 40%... while admitting he "doesn't control" it. And don't get me started on the Liberals: Sussan Ley's crew, fresh off peddling "nuclear net zero" and 180,000 annual migrants as gospel, now lines up to echo Labor. Even the Australian Bureau of Statistics, once a neutral arbiter, has joined the chorus, tweaking numbers to make the quarter-million floor look like the "historical average."

This isn't governance; it's gaslighting. The uni-party's real genius? Removing the big fights, migration and net zero, from the ballot box altogether. Polls scream for a pause (the latest IPA survey shows Aussies begging for a freeze), but the response? Slap a "racist" or "neo-Nazi" label on anyone who marches. As van Onselen quips, it's "Sussan Albanese" in action: a duopoly so cosy, it might as well merge headquarters.

Enter the March for Australia. What started as fringe frustration in August has iterated into a sharper critique by October 19. Flyers evolved from blunt jabs ("We've imported more Indians in five years than Greeks and Italians in a century") to surgical strikes: "A nation without fair wages, housing, safety, community, and identity." They're not scapegoating newcomers, that's the media's lazy pivot, but calling out the system that treats people as interchangeable widgets in a GDP machine. And they're right: Adding seven million souls in 20 years isn't a "supply issue" for housing; it's engineered infinite demand, courtesy of policies that prioritise visas over villages.

From Protest to Power: The Opposition Vacuum Filled

Here's the evolutionary leap: The March isn't just yelling into the void anymore. It's becoming the opposition because the official one won't. Andrew Hastie and Jacinta Price flirt with sanity, Hastie even nods to lower numbers, but the party machine piles on, exiling them to the fringes. Peter Dutton's ghost still haunts with his "normal" 250,000 target, as if that's not a firehose when the pre-COVID average hovered around 90,000 (sorry, voters; history got rewritten).

Meanwhile, the Marches are building a narrative the polls already endorse. They're citing data (OECD productivity slumps in migrant-heavy Anglophone nations like ours, versus homogeneous powerhouses like Japan), mocking union complicity (diverse workplaces unionize less? The ACTU's too busy schmoozing stakeholders to notice), and forecasting dystopias ("Australia could become 95% Indian, and they wouldn't care"). Provocative? Sure. But grounded in the maths: Our migrant share could balloon past 30%, aping Middle Eastern autocracies while source nations like India and China guard their homogeneity like dragons.

This isn't xenophobia; it's maths-meets-mores. Unions, once the Left's backbone, are AWOL on wage theft and poor conditions fuelled by the influx. The ABC and Guardian tut-tut from their multicultural high horses, but counter-protesters in Canberra, spouting "neo-Nazi" at anyone eyeing zero net migration, only highlight the establishment's fragility. Voters see through it: 17 million of us, versus 227 MPs who treat democracy like a suggestion box.

Albo Globalism: The Real Culprit in the Dock

At its core, the March targets "Albo Globalism," that toxic blend of open borders and green virtue-signalling that shafts the West while genuflecting to the East. Net zero? It's not "climate science"; it's arrogant guesswork. China pledges 7-10% emissions cuts and gets a standing ovation, Ross Garnaut, the high priest of this faith, openly argues the West should ship "zero-emissions semi-processed goods" to Beijing, goods that don't exist, but hey, optics!

Albanese's Washington charm offensive burnished his reformer cred, but it masked the rot: Policies that leave us poorer, more divided, and hooked on Chinese rare earths we might never secure. Productivity? The worst in 60 years, per Martin Parkinson's whitewash, blame "complex factors," never the migration deluge or net-zero derangement. Chalmers and Albo can ride this to cushy post-political gigs (think Gillard 2.0), but the bill lands on renters, tradies, and families priced out of the dream.

The Marches call bluff. By Australia Day, expect crowds chanting not just against migrants, but against the globalist gospel that equates endless arrivals with progress. It's democratic theatre at its rawest, voters as actors, not audience.

A Call to the Void: Join the March, Shape the Future

Wouldn't we all love those fail-proof jobs, where you flood the market with labour, jack up energy costs, and still exit as a "reformer"? Nah, most of us would settle for a fair go: Affordable homes, steady wages, and policies that put Australia first, not some UN scorecard.

The March for Australia isn't perfect, its citations could punch harder, its rhetoric sometimes veers provocative, but it's evolving. From August's raw anger to October's pointed manifesto, it's coalescing as the opposition Albo's globalism deserves. The uni-party splintered the Coalition; now voters are splintering back.

If you're in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide or Brisbane come January 26, grab a sign. History favours the marchers, not the memo-writers. In a nation built on convicts and dreamers, this could be the next chapter. Let's write it together, before the migrant tide rises too high and swamps us all.

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2025/10/the-march-for-australia-is-becoming-the-opposition/