One of these anglers is going home with dinner.
An infographic came through my feed this week, shared by one of my more thoughtful followers. You’ve probably seen one like it. “The Facts About Migrants in Australia.” Beautiful design. Sydney Harbour Bridge across the top. Pink graduation cap. Treasury figures. Census data. Sources properly cited at the bottom.
I fact-checked it. It’s accurate. Migrants really do pay more in taxes than they take out. They really are younger, better educated, more likely to be working. The numbers stack up.
And it will change exactly nobody’s mind.
Because while the well-meaning people are making infographics, Pauline Hanson and Angus Taylor are telling a story. And a story beats a bar chart every single time.
Here’s the thing nobody wants to admit.
Taylor and Hanson aren’t stupid. They’ve got staffers. They’ve read the Treasury paper. They know the average skilled migrant contributes about $200,000 over their lifetime while the average Aussie-born citizen costs the budget $85,000.
They just don’t care. Because they’ve worked out something the infographic-makers haven’t: the fight isn’t actually about the numbers.
The fight is about who you are, who’s on your side, and who’s making your life harder. Housing costs are through the roof. You can’t get in to see a GP. The roads are choked. Your kid can’t afford a house in the suburb you grew up in. Something’s gone wrong, and somebody needs to cop the blame.
You don’t beat that with a pie chart. You really don’t.
Why data doesn’t work on social issues
This pattern shows up everywhere once you start looking for it.
Crime stats have been dropping for thirty years. Tough-on-crime campaigns still win. Why? Because the fight isn’t about the trendline. It’s about whether you feel safe walking to your car at night.
The climate science is settled. The politics isn’t. Why? Because the fight isn’t about radiative forcing. It’s about whose town shuts down when the coal mine closes.
Same with guns in America. Same with drugs. Same with nuclear power. When the data is clear but the politics is loud, it’s almost always because the data is answering a different question than the one people are actually asking.
The migration infographic answers: “Are migrants good for the budget?” Yes, they are.
But Betty in Blacktown isn’t asking that. Betty’s asking: “Why can’t my daughter afford a house? Why does the bus take an hour now? Who’s looking out for me?”
And if your answer is “well actually, according to Treasury modelling…” you’ve already lost her.
What 20 years of running a charity taught me about this
I spent two decades running Action for Agriculture. Australian agriculture had an image problem with young people. Kids thought farming was boring, dirty, going broke, finished.
We made infographics. Plenty of them. Good ones. But we never led with them.
We led with people. Young farmers, sharp, funny, articulate twenty-somethings doing extraordinary things with technology, sustainability, animal welfare. We called them Young Farming Champions. We put them in front of school kids. We ran the Archibull Prize where kids made art about agriculture after meeting these young farmers and hearing their stories.
Then, once the kids were hooked, once they’d met Cassie or Sam and thought “hang on, this is actually interesting,” then we’d hand them the infographic. The GDP figures. The export numbers. The sustainability stats. The careers data.
And by that point, they actually read it. Because they’d already decided they cared.
That’s the bit the pro-migration crowd is getting wrong. They’re handing Betty the infographic on the first date. Before she’s even sat down. Before she knows why she should care. And then they’re surprised when she walks out.
So what should the pro-migration side actually do?
Same order of operations.
Lead with people. Not “migrants” as a category. Specific, named, photographed humans. The Filipino nurse who looked after your mum in palliative care. The Indian engineer who fixed your suburb’s water. The Sudanese kid in your daughter’s class who’s just been picked for the rep team.
Get Betty curious. Get her invested. Get her thinking “hang on, that’s not the story I’m being told.”
Then, once she’s hooked, bring out the Treasury numbers. The 56% with tertiary qualifications. The $200,000 lifetime contribution. The employment rates. By then she’ll read them, because she’ll already be on the journey.
And here’s the bit the nice people really struggle with. Acknowledge what the other side is getting right. Housing pressure is real. Infrastructure lag is real. Wage pressure in some industries is real. If your pro-migration message pretends none of that exists, you sound like you live on a different planet to Betty, and she’ll vote for whoever doesn’t.
And the hard truth. The people making these careful, accurate, well-sourced infographics aren’t wrong. They’ve just got the order wrong.
Hanson and Taylor lead with story. Threat, identity, who’s on your side. By the time anyone gets around to checking the numbers, the emotional work is done and the data bounces off.
The nice people lead with numbers. And the story never gets told at all.
If you care about social issues, migration, climate, reconciliation, whatever your patch is, make your infographics. Make them beautiful. Make them accurate. But understand they’re the second move, not the first.
Hook them with a human. Seal it with the data.
That’s the order. We had it right at Action4agriculture. The pro-migration crowd needs to figure it out before the next election.