By fixating on immigration numbers, are our leaders missing the bigger picture for working Australians?

It can be tempting to blame grievance politics or the rise of One Nation for the tenor of current debate, but these are symptoms of a deeper malaise When the immigration minister, Tony Burke, approached the National Press Club podium on Thursday, the eyes of every migrant in the country would have been fixed on him. But, in fact, Burke’s address was a message for all working people across the country – and a signal of the times ahead for all of us. The past 12 months have seen all sides of politics cohere around the consensus articulated in the introduction to Burke’s address by the press club’s president, Tom Connell: “there is furious agreement over a need for a cut to immigration.” The only difference across the political spectrum is in the detail: who deserves to be cut, and who is valuable or otherwise deserving enough to remain.