Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been slammed by everyday Aussies after gushing about the Indian community’s contributions to “modern Australia”.
Mr Albanese shared photos of himself at an Australia India Business Council event on Monday on Facebook and Instagram, but not on X, where his posts about multiculturalism are often flooded with critical comments.
“It’s hard to imagine modern Australia without the contributions of our Indian community,” the Prime Minister wrote along with images of him making a speech and shaking hands with an Indian woman.
“Creating jobs. Building businesses. Making our nation stronger and more vibrant. Today we celebrated 40 years of the Australia India Business Council as we build stronger trade ties between our nations.”
But Mr Albanese’s Facebook attracted thousands of comments, mainly negative, including from Indian immigrants who said the timing was terrible.
“Albo with his people again. Never seen with a Aussie crowd,” read the most popular comment.
“Counting the votes with every handshake,” read another.
“I find it really easy actually, I’m pretty sure this is Australia, not India,” said another woman in a direct response to the post.
“As someone of Indian heritage myself, even I had to laugh at the timing of this post. When half the country is swinging toward Liberal and One Nation over immigration concerns, Anthony Albanese is on FB posting ‘look how much stronger immigration makes Australia’. Sir…read the room,” another said.
Others asked “What jobs do they create that weren’t already here? Just curious?” and said “We’ve got the butter chicken recipe now, we don’t need them any more.”
The post comes after several major polls showed One Nation either in front of Labor or only a couple of percentage points behind amid growing public anger over the record-high levels of mass immigration under Mr Albanese.
Since Mr Albanese became Prime Minister in May 2022 more then 2.5 million immigrants have arrived in Australia for net overseas migration of about 1.5 million, and Indians last year became the largest foreign-born group for the first time, overtaking those born in England.
As of June 30 last year the Indian-born population was 971,020, an increase of 522,000 people since 2015 and up 884,000 since 2000, when it was just 97,085.
According to 2024 estimates there are another 200,971 people born in Australia with Indian ancestry, and 113,947 who were born in other countries but have Indian ancestry.
