# The “three shocks” reshaping Australian politics

An episode of [7am](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1461999702), 28 Aug 2026, 18 min.

Audio: https://p.podderapp.com/2544644999/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/2fb3740d-3436-44af-8cc0-a91900716aa5/62723a1f-3e96-4fc4-882c-b25e0181da4d/883679f8-8191-43e3-9404-b4b40065514a/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=70f29d90-2a63-48aa-bf8f-b25e0181da70

Australia has changed in ways our politics is still struggling to understand. We are now a majority migrant nation. Professional women have overtaken blue-collar men as the largest group in the workforce. And the two countries Australia has relied on most, China and the United States, have become less predictable. Labor has adapted to parts of this new reality. The Coalition, so far, has struggled to do the same. Today, author of Three Shocks, George Megalogenis on the tectonic plates reshaping Australian politics. If you enjoy 7am, the best way you can support us is by making a contribution at 7ampodcast.com.au/support. Socials: Stay in touch with us on Instagram Guest: Author of Three Shocks George Megalogenis Photo: AAP Image/Dean Lewins See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James, and you're listening to 7am. Australia has
[0:09] Speaker 1: changed in ways our politics are struggling to understand. We
[0:13] Speaker 1: are now a majority migrant nation. Professional women have overtaken
[0:17] Speaker 1: blue-collar men as the largest group in the workforce, and
[0:20] Speaker 1: the two countries Australia has relied on most, China and
[0:23] Speaker 1: the United States, have become less predictable. Labor has adapted
[0:27] Speaker 1: to parts of this new reality. The coalition so far...
[0:31] Speaker 1: has struggled to do the same. Today, author of the
[0:34] Speaker 1: book Three Shocks, George Megalogenis, on the tectonic plates reshaping
[0:39] Speaker 1: Australian politics. It's Saturday, August 29. George, welcome back to 7am.
[0:54] Speaker 1: Your new book is called Three Shocks, and those shocks
[0:57] Speaker 1: you say will define our national politics into the future.
[1:00] Speaker 1: So what are they?
[1:02] Speaker 2: The first one has been coming for a while. We're
[1:05] Speaker 2: a majority migrant nation again. It's the first time since
[1:09] Speaker 2: the late 19th century, more than half the population either
[1:12] Speaker 2: born overseas or with at least one migrant parent. That's
[1:15] Speaker 2: a time on country measure. That's first and second generation Australian,
[1:19] Speaker 2: new Australians as they're commonly known. The second shock, and
[1:23] Speaker 2: this has also been coming for a while, is that
[1:26] Speaker 2: the economy is now centred on the labour of women.
[1:29] Speaker 2: So professional women are holding tertiary degrees, working across the fields, health,
[1:35] Speaker 2: legal profession, education in the arts and science technology. They
[1:41] Speaker 2: are the largest group of workers by occupation. Now, they
[1:44] Speaker 2: overtop the male tradesmen as the single largest group of
[1:47] Speaker 2: worker by occupation as long ago now as 2015. And
[1:52] Speaker 2: we became majority migrant around 2018. Those two shocks combined,
[1:56] Speaker 2: I think, force us to reconsider our You know, that
[2:00] Speaker 2: operating assumption about who we are as Australians, which has
[2:02] Speaker 2: always been centred on the blue-collar male, a fellow working
[2:06] Speaker 2: with his hands, defining not just the centre of Australia
[2:09] Speaker 2: and our identity, but also our idea of progress, how
[2:12] Speaker 2: we sort of make our way in the world as
[2:14] Speaker 2: a nation. Now, the third one, which is coincidental, but
[2:18] Speaker 2: it tells you a lot about the anxiety of the
[2:21] Speaker 2: age that we're living in now, is both our security partner,
[2:25] Speaker 2: the US, and our major trading partner, China, Both began
[2:28] Speaker 2: to practice a form of sort of global power that
[2:31] Speaker 2: was capricious, unreliable. And for countries like Australia that used
[2:36] Speaker 2: to view itself as the nation that could get along
[2:39] Speaker 2: with everybody in the world, we've been on the receiving
[2:41] Speaker 2: end of rougher than normal treatment from Beijing during the
[2:46] Speaker 2: origins of COVID debate.
[2:49] Speaker 3: Some wrong words and deeds by Australia recently that have
[2:53] Speaker 3: aroused dissatisfaction among the Chinese people. The wrong words were
[2:57] Speaker 3: daring to call for an international inquiry into a virus
[3:00] Speaker 3: that's crippled the world.
[3:02] Speaker 4: It is said out of common sense and I think
[3:05] Speaker 4: in Australia's national interest and in the global interest.
[3:09] Speaker 2: And of course with the Americans beginning with that infamous
[3:12] Speaker 2: beating call that Donald Trump had a couple of days
[3:15] Speaker 2: after he was inaugurated with Malcolm Turnbull. Essentially, the summary was.
[3:22] Speaker 4: It started off, no way, Jose, and ended up, yes,
[3:27] Speaker 4: but I hate you. So I got the right outcome,
[3:31] Speaker 4: but it was a pretty tough call.
[3:34] Speaker 2: So the Americans obviously have been causing a lot of
[3:36] Speaker 2: mayhem on the global stage for a while, but the
[3:38] Speaker 2: Chinese have also been practicing a form of global power
[3:41] Speaker 2: that's more assertive than the one that we were sort
[3:44] Speaker 2: of familiar with at the turn of the 21st century.
[3:46] Speaker 1: Okay, so we're going to drill down more into these
[3:48] Speaker 1: first two shocks, starting with the shift in our population makeup,
[3:52] Speaker 1: which is now, as you say, majority migrants and their kids.
[3:56] Speaker 1: What does that mean for the debates we're currently having
[3:59] Speaker 1: around migration numbers in this country?
[4:01] Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's fascinating, isn't it? If you think about it,
[4:04] Speaker 2: it would appear to be a counterintuitive moment for an
[4:07] Speaker 2: anti-immigration sentiment to rise in Australia. But looking at the
[4:11] Speaker 2: numbers the way I have Regional Australia feels more alienated
[4:15] Speaker 2: from the city than it has traditionally because it now
[4:18] Speaker 2: has not just an economic and maybe a bit of
[4:20] Speaker 2: a cultural gap between city and country, you've now got
[4:24] Speaker 2: an identity gap. You've got diverse capital cities and very,
[4:28] Speaker 2: very white regional centres and Liberal Party vote collapses in
[4:32] Speaker 2: the city first. Now it's in the regions when they're
[4:35] Speaker 2: in a lot of trouble because they've been cannibalised by
[4:37] Speaker 2: One Nation and One Nation has risen on this idea
[4:39] Speaker 2: of The rest of the country doesn't look like you anymore.
[4:42] Speaker 2: It doesn't respect you. These elites code tertiary educated young people,
[4:49] Speaker 2: plus migrants. They're not on your side. Let's reclaim old
[4:52] Speaker 2: Australia on everybody's behalf. Now, this backlash is about taking
[4:57] Speaker 2: Australia back to a place where it can't go.
[4:59] Speaker 5: One nation will do its best to change this country's direction,
[5:03] Speaker 5: to reassert its values, to honour its traditions, to reinforce
[5:07] Speaker 5: that we are one nation under one flag. And my
[5:11] Speaker 5: party will put Australia back.
[5:12] Speaker 2: Do you hear what Hanson talks about when she says
[5:14] Speaker 2: she prefers a monoculture over a multicultural?
[5:17] Speaker 5: We cannot be a multicultural society. We are a multiracial society,
[5:25] Speaker 5: but we must be monocultural.
[5:28] Speaker 2: I always think that subconsciously, and Australians do this when
[5:32] Speaker 2: they mean to or not, it channels some of those
[5:35] Speaker 2: impulses of white Australia, which is this impulse of control.
[5:38] Speaker 2: Controlling population... control your wages system through tariffs, control your industry.
[5:44] Speaker 2: And you can now see this in the argument that
[5:47] Speaker 2: that One Nation is trying to have with the migration
[5:50] Speaker 2: numbers and they're not quite clear about what they want.
[5:53] Speaker 4: It's 130,000, it's 130,000, it's 130,000. Not according to new
[5:57] Speaker 4: colleague David Farley yesterday.
[5:59] Speaker 3: Potentially an extra 100,000 on top of the 130,000.
[6:01] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[6:02] Speaker 2: One Nation left scrambling.
[6:04] Speaker 5: OK, so he was just wrong saying there'd.
[6:07] Speaker 2: Be an extra 100.
[6:08] Speaker 5: There's not going to be an extra 100 on top
[6:09] Speaker 5: of that, no.
[6:12] Speaker 2: They do want to preserve the British backpacker for rural sectors...
[6:16] Speaker 2: They want to keep people picking fruit as long as
[6:18] Speaker 2: they're white fruit pickers. But the cities, they don't want
[6:20] Speaker 2: any other person to come to the cities. People in
[6:23] Speaker 2: the city might go, actually, we wouldn't mind a bit
[6:26] Speaker 2: of a slowdown in our growth. But it's all about
[6:29] Speaker 2: control in the end, isn't it?
[6:31] Speaker 1: You talk in the book about the impact of Scott
[6:33] Speaker 1: Morrison going after China, wanting an investigation into the origins
[6:37] Speaker 1: of COVID. They saw Chinese voters turn against him because
[6:41] Speaker 1: they felt attacked here in Australia. Could we see the
[6:44] Speaker 1: same thing with migrants during COVID? the debates we're currently having,
[6:48] Speaker 1: that they may be less likely to vote for a
[6:50] Speaker 1: mob like One Nation or the Coalition, given the same
[6:54] Speaker 1: rhetoric that's kind of flowing about the place?
[6:56] Speaker 2: Yeah, so, Dan, when you think about the numbers game,
[6:59] Speaker 2: so if you were counting as a political party, how
[7:01] Speaker 2: do I get to 50 plus one? Looking at the
[7:04] Speaker 2: map today, it's hard to see how you can form
[7:07] Speaker 2: majority government without a substantial toehold in metropolitan Australia. You
[7:12] Speaker 2: pretty much have to be the majority party within the
[7:14] Speaker 2: capitals themselves to to have a shot at majority government
[7:18] Speaker 2: to begin with. Now, if the cities are becoming more
[7:20] Speaker 2: diverse for a number of reasons, but especially Melbourne and Sydney,
[7:24] Speaker 2: and now the populations of Melbourne and Sydney now two
[7:27] Speaker 2: thirds each, first and second generation migrant. You know, Melbourne
[7:31] Speaker 2: and Sydney are 40% of the nation's population, but they
[7:35] Speaker 2: are also home to two thirds of all the migrants
[7:37] Speaker 2: from India and three quarters of all the migrants, not
[7:40] Speaker 2: just from China, but also from countries like Vietnam. So
[7:43] Speaker 2: it's almost unavoidable that a party tries to gain power
[7:47] Speaker 2: on behalf of old Australia, which is no longer the majority,
[7:51] Speaker 2: can't get a toehold in the city simply because of
[7:53] Speaker 2: who lives there. The danger for Labor, because Labor is now,
[7:57] Speaker 2: you know, you notice Labor's been talking about cutting the
[7:59] Speaker 2: numbers back. By the way, cutting the numbers back on
[8:02] Speaker 2: a program they inherited from the coalition. Most voters now,
[8:06] Speaker 2: you know, four years into a Labor government think that
[8:09] Speaker 2: this is Labor's program. And so Labor are now in
[8:12] Speaker 2: this crazy position where having sort of coasted for three
[8:14] Speaker 2: and a half years politically, are now worried about some
[8:18] Speaker 2: of those regional provincial centres where Labor voters are still
[8:21] Speaker 2: relatively strong when One Nation is coming after them.
[8:25] Speaker 1: I mean, let's ruminate on that a little bit, George.
[8:27] Speaker 1: I mean, what happens if migration numbers are cut in
[8:30] Speaker 1: a substantial way? Will that arrest the change we're seeing
[8:33] Speaker 1: in our population make-up? And is that the point? I mean,
[8:36] Speaker 1: that parties like One Nation and the Coalition recognise that
[8:40] Speaker 1: we're now majority migrants and would rather take us back
[8:43] Speaker 1: to another reality to try and reverse the trend?
[8:45] Speaker 2: Pauline Henson, bless her, did say at the press club
[8:48] Speaker 2: that more than half the population is first or second
[8:52] Speaker 2: generation migrant. And she said, do the Australian people want this?
[8:55] Speaker 2: And I thought it was an interesting grab because she's
[8:58] Speaker 2: saying that the majority of the population doesn't want to
[9:00] Speaker 2: be the majority of the population.
[9:02] Speaker 5: In the 2021 census, more than half of Australian residents, 51.5%
[9:06] Speaker 5: were born overseas or had one parent born overseas. 51.5%.
[9:17] Speaker 5: Is that what's supported by the Australian electorate? Is that
[9:23] Speaker 5: what Australia wants?
[9:26] Speaker 2: But if you were able to slow the intake, for
[9:29] Speaker 2: whatever reason, if that, you thought, in an idealised world,
[9:34] Speaker 2: could help you catch up on things like housing supply,
[9:36] Speaker 2: but I don't know where you get your labour forth from, primarily.
[9:39] Speaker 2: But let's say you could control the numbers without economic cost. Demographically,
[9:44] Speaker 2: what would that do? Well, it doesn't change the underlying
[9:47] Speaker 2: equation that drives diversity in Australia today. Migrants had close
[9:50] Speaker 2: to twice as many kids as old Australians did, you know,
[9:54] Speaker 2: as Australians have been here for three generations or longer.
[9:57] Speaker 2: An old Australian has a kid. they've got to wait
[10:00] Speaker 2: how long before they have their kid right 20 or
[10:03] Speaker 2: 30 years right a migrant arrives is in their early
[10:06] Speaker 2: 20s on a skilled visa they marry and before the
[10:10] Speaker 2: end of that decade before their 30s they have a
[10:12] Speaker 2: kid as well so their kid is always going to
[10:14] Speaker 2: add to the population faster than the local born kid
[10:18] Speaker 2: so slow the intake and hope that you don't crash
[10:22] Speaker 2: the economy, you still don't change that fundamental equation, which
[10:27] Speaker 2: is the migrants is going to have more kids than
[10:29] Speaker 2: the old Australian population. So it doesn't matter which number
[10:31] Speaker 2: you operate, that diversity is going to advance. That diversity
[10:36] Speaker 2: is now unavoidable in the capital cities because it's not
[10:40] Speaker 2: just the majority of the population growth in the capital
[10:43] Speaker 2: city comes from migration. Almost the entirety of the growth
[10:47] Speaker 2: in both Melbourne and Sydney comes from first and second
[10:49] Speaker 2: generation migrants.
[10:53] Speaker 1: Coming up, how women changed the game and left the
[10:56] Speaker 1: Liberals lagging. George, for decades, politicians have built their idea
[11:09] Speaker 1: of the average voter as the blue-collar tradie or Howard's battlers,
[11:13] Speaker 1: as they used to be called. But the second shock
[11:16] Speaker 1: is that professional women have replaced blue-collar men as the
[11:19] Speaker 1: largest segment of Australia's workforce. What does that mean for
[11:23] Speaker 1: our politics?
[11:24] Speaker 2: Do you know, it meant nothing so long as Labor
[11:28] Speaker 2: and the coalition kept fighting elections on the same old assumption,
[11:32] Speaker 2: that the Howard battle had decided that elections would decide
[11:35] Speaker 2: in the outer suburbs and the metropolitan fringe. What Labor
[11:39] Speaker 2: figured when they had a look at the electorate again
[11:41] Speaker 2: with a sort of fresh set of eyes is they'd
[11:44] Speaker 2: kept talking to a bloke who mattered less at elections.
[11:48] Speaker 2: So their identity as a party, as a working man's party,
[11:50] Speaker 2: was actually constraining them where there were voters willing to
[11:54] Speaker 2: support them because the coalition wasn't looking there either. And
[11:57] Speaker 2: that's women who, to all intents and purposes, were working class,
[12:00] Speaker 2: working in the caring sector. Now, professional women, obviously the
[12:03] Speaker 2: largest group by occupation, and they outnumber male trade and
[12:08] Speaker 2: technical workers. But female carers also now outnumber male labourers
[12:13] Speaker 2: in the lower skills. part of the workforce. So you
[12:15] Speaker 2: put the professional women and the carers together and suddenly
[12:18] Speaker 2: you've got a super majority in the electorate that goes
[12:20] Speaker 2: across class lines, it goes across age divides, it goes
[12:23] Speaker 2: across education divides. And this is why Albanese... The very
[12:27] Speaker 2: first thing he does as opposition leader in the budget
[12:30] Speaker 2: reply speech in 2020 was go for universal childcare.
[12:35] Speaker 6: Right around Australia, instead of childcare supporting families where both
[12:40] Speaker 6: parents want to work, the costs... and the tax system
[12:44] Speaker 6: actively discourage this. And, as is too often the case,
[12:49] Speaker 6: it's working mums who cop the worst of it. If
[12:53] Speaker 6: I'm elected prime minister, I am going to fix this.
[12:57] Speaker 2: So suddenly you had a contest. Suddenly you had two
[13:00] Speaker 2: parties looking at the electorate through different sets of assumptions.
[13:07] Speaker 2: All Labor then had to do was to not offend
[13:09] Speaker 2: women between then and the election, and the coalition and
[13:13] Speaker 2: especially the Liberal Party in their 22 post-mortem say, you know,
[13:17] Speaker 2: they lost women of every age group. And so the
[13:21] Speaker 2: idea that women decide the 22 election in a profound
[13:25] Speaker 2: way by evicting the Liberals from the capital cities and
[13:27] Speaker 2: by basically creating almost an existential crisis for the very
[13:31] Speaker 2: meaning of the modern Liberal Party, that is a fantastic... Now,
[13:36] Speaker 2: this is not a partisan observation, but in terms of
[13:38] Speaker 2: a correction source to real Australia, that is a fantastic outcome.
[13:43] Speaker 2: in a democracy. Now, the Hanson people will be looking
[13:46] Speaker 2: at the shock that they're trying to oppose from regional
[13:49] Speaker 2: Australia as another democratic corrective. Now, you know, you want
[13:53] Speaker 2: to be able to hear all these voices at the
[13:54] Speaker 2: same time, but then you have to take a step
[13:56] Speaker 2: back if you're in the representative game and think, how
[13:59] Speaker 2: do you build bridges between all these groups? Not ultimately now,
[14:04] Speaker 2: which is where we seem to have ended up, If
[14:08] Speaker 2: my tribe's big enough, I could just talk to my
[14:10] Speaker 2: tribe and I'll be fine. And I just hope that
[14:14] Speaker 2: both Labor and the Coalition don't fall into this trap.
[14:18] Speaker 1: Well, that kind of goes to what you say at
[14:21] Speaker 1: the finish of the book, George, that in order for
[14:24] Speaker 1: Australia to move forward, we need to bring Australians together,
[14:27] Speaker 1: first Australians, old Australians and the new Australians. I guess
[14:31] Speaker 1: that begs the question, do we have a leader in
[14:34] Speaker 1: our midst that is capable of doing that?
[14:37] Speaker 2: Not now. Think about those two identity shocks. They've been
[14:41] Speaker 2: coming for around 50 years each, and they force us
[14:45] Speaker 2: to reconsider the thing that we thought we always understood
[14:48] Speaker 2: about Australia in the first 200-something years of European settlement.
[14:52] Speaker 2: That's a male-centred and a white-centred view of who we are.
[14:56] Speaker 2: That clearly leaves too many people out. At the moment, now,
[14:59] Speaker 2: it leaves the majority out, and you can't keep talking
[15:02] Speaker 2: to a minority part of your identity and hope that
[15:04] Speaker 2: that unifies. You need a new story. But it's always
[15:08] Speaker 2: been the same story you've needed. You need to be
[15:10] Speaker 2: able to tell a unifying story. But because this story
[15:13] Speaker 2: involves complexity, almost competing identities, you have to find a
[15:17] Speaker 2: singular identity. Hence the reversion back. Somebody else needs to
[15:21] Speaker 2: own the story of who we are in the 21st century.
[15:24] Speaker 2: But bear in mind, the best opportunity for this was
[15:27] Speaker 2: to at least have had a much more informed debate
[15:30] Speaker 2: in 2023 for The Voice. And the big sliding door
[15:34] Speaker 2: on the Labor side, even though they ran dead, I mean,
[15:36] Speaker 2: they tanked that. In the end, I think they just
[15:38] Speaker 2: tanked that campaign because I didn't think they could win it.
[15:41] Speaker 2: I tend to be an optimist about Australia because I
[15:43] Speaker 2: think long sweep of history is quite an optimistic story.
[15:47] Speaker 2: But my short-term pessimism is probably quite acute at the moment.
[15:50] Speaker 2: And that goes back to the earlier thing you mentioned
[15:52] Speaker 2: about leadership. It only requires one side to lead for
[15:56] Speaker 2: the system to then course correct, for everybody else to
[15:58] Speaker 2: then follow that example. But whilst everybody's sort of looking sideways,
[16:02] Speaker 2: wondering whether One Nation could get from 25% to 30%,
[16:06] Speaker 2: And then really sweating those last five when you're still
[16:09] Speaker 2: not thinking about the other 70. You've already got a
[16:12] Speaker 2: mandate there. So, you know, you get this question just
[16:16] Speaker 2: on the migration story now. You get this question, you know,
[16:18] Speaker 2: are the numbers too high? Most people will answer probably yes.
[16:21] Speaker 2: Let's cut them. There's nothing wrong with having that debate.
[16:25] Speaker 2: But then you ask the other question, do you still
[16:26] Speaker 2: support multiculturalism? You'll still get a 7 or 8 in
[16:29] Speaker 2: front of that number, 70 or 80%. So are you
[16:32] Speaker 2: actually going to sacrifice... that consensus for a race to
[16:38] Speaker 2: the bottom on behalf of 30% of the population. I'm
[16:40] Speaker 2: not saying that that 30% of the population doesn't have
[16:42] Speaker 2: a valid concern about cost of living and their sense
[16:46] Speaker 2: of place in Australia today, but I'd much rather bring
[16:49] Speaker 2: them in with the 70 than try and stop their
[16:53] Speaker 2: 30 from becoming 35 because it'll never get to 70.
[16:56] Speaker 2: All you end up doing is demoralising the other 70
[17:00] Speaker 2: and you can't really build... a sort of resilient and
[17:04] Speaker 2: powerful country in the 21st century on that sort of
[17:07] Speaker 2: risk-averse assumption.
[17:10] Speaker 1: Well, George, it's a fascinating book during a fascinating time.
[17:14] Speaker 1: Thanks for writing it and thanks for coming on 7am.
[17:17] Speaker 2: Thanks again and thanks for the time.
[17:35] Speaker 1: 7am is a daily show from Solstice Media. It's made
[17:38] Speaker 1: by Atticus Bastow, Chris Stangate, Crystal Keller, Renee Auckland, Ruby Jones,
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[18:08] Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to 7am. Have yourself a great weekend.

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