Fact sandwiches

I subscribe to research company Roy Morgan … as you do … and its been freaking me out lately.

I came for stuff like “Australians splash out on Father’s Day drinks” for Drinks Digest, but what it’s been delivering lately is “21% of Australians believe homosexuality is immoral” and “Migration concerns surge post-pandemic”.

Apparently Roy Morgan has been monitoring Australians views on homosexuality, asking approximately 1,000 Australians each week (50,000 each year) whether they agree of disagree with the statement ‘I believe homosexuality is immoral’.

It has also been asking a representative cross-section of 456,069 Australian Electors aged 18+ from July 2016 to June 2025 ‘Which three issues are the most important to you?’

I really wish they’d ask questions that generate email headlines like “90 per cent of Australians prefer to mind their own business” or “95 per cent of people think migration improved Australian cuisine”.

But no, Roy Morgan informs me managing immigration is most likely to be perceived as an important issue in South Australia, while one in four men now agree that homosexuality is immoral.

And there I was getting all teary at election time, thinking Australians had voted for kindness and acceptance over hate and fear.

On Saturday, thousands of protesters converged on Australia’s capital cities and regional centres to join anti-immigration protests.

I found it quite disturbing after spending too many nights doom scrolling about what’s happening in the US.

Liz Allen, a demographer at the Australian National University Centre for Social Policy Research, told SBS common myths driving anti-immigration sentiment include claims that migrants suppress wages, steal local jobs, or inflate house prices — all of which she described as “nonsense”.

But how do you fight the tide of fear?

Professor Daniel Ghezelbash, a scholar of international and comparative refugee and migration law from the University of New South Wales, told SBS Examines he recommends using a “fact sandwich” approach to counter false claims, such as migration pushing up house prices.

He suggests:

1. Start with a fact – his example of this is “When Australia’s borders were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, migration was at its lowest level in a century. Yet, housing prices still went up.”

2. Warn about the myth: “Instead of tackling the real issues, some political actors are just blaming migrants as if they’re the reason housing has become unaffordable.”

3. Point out the fallacy: “They’re oversimplifying the problem to distract you from the actual causes.”

4. End with the fact: “There are many factors that are driving Australia’s housing crisis. And migration is just one very small piece of the puzzle.”

I’m not sure that’s an entirely helpful “fact sandwich”, as it doesn’t offer any concrete explanations for what the actual causes are.

But here’s a fact sandwich triangle from me: we’d be stuffed without migrant nurses and aged care workers.

Australia’s aged care sector faces a severe and worsening worker shortage that is projected to reach more than 110,000 direct care workers by 2030, driven by our ageing population, high staff turnover due to poor conditions and low pay and the retirement of existing workers.

Ironically, Roy Morgan tells me older people are significantly more likely to raise immigration as an issue. Among those aged 60 or over, concerns are up 10 percentage points since 2023.

So I’m entirely not sure who they think is going to look after them when it’s their time for nursing home admission.

I do agree house prices are totally cooked, but I’m not throwing blame around because I’m not an economist.

The youngest just had a weekend away in Tathra, which is literally in the middle of nowhere – a six-hour drive from Sydney, seven hours from Melbourne and three hours from Canberra. 

She said she’d love to live there one day, so I typed Tathra into my trusty Domain app to check out prices. Basic two-bedroom units without water views were going for almost $700,000. Far out!

Way back when I was in my mid-20s, buying a house was easy. All I needed for my first place was a $10,000 deposit and the repayments didn’t stop me doing much at all. Those were the days.

Now the average house price in Sydney is around $1.56 million to $1.7 million, which requires a scarily hefty deposit.

Poor Gen Z. Not only can they not afford houses, they’ll also be slugged in the future with the slowdown in economic growth due to the population ageing, which will potentially lowering their standard of living even further.

By 2066, it’s projected that people in Australia aged over 65 will make up between 21% and 23% of the total population.

I checked with Google and it’s very unlikely I’ll have to worry my wrinkled head about that as I will be 98 and will have most likely have shuffled off this mortal coil.

PS I thought I was an AI hater, but I find myself secretly enjoying being able to ask Google questions like “what is the average house price in Sydney” and “why is it a mortal coil”.

According to Google: “Mortal coil refers to the turmoil and struggles of earthly life, derived from 16th-century English where “coil” meant a fuss or disturbance. In Shakespeare’s famous Hamlet soliloquy (“To be, or not to be”), the phrase describes the hardships of being alive, which Hamlet contemplates ‘shuffling off’ by ‘shuffling off’ his body to achieve a peaceful death.” 

Good to know.

Song of the day: The Smiths “There is a light that never goes out”