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For the first time since records began, India has overtaken England as Australia’s largest source of migrants. The margin is roughly 70 people, a number smaller than a typical city apartment block. This is not a blip. It is a structural shift in the story of modern Australia.
A shift this significant deserved a serious national conversation about what it means for Australia economically, strategically, and as a society. That conversation has been largely absent. What has happened instead is something quite different. Last year’s “March for Australia” rallies singled out Indian migrants explicitly.
When Melbourne’s city council proposed a Little India precinct, in a city where Chinatown and Koreatown already thrive, the backlash turned ugly fast. Meanwhile, politicians reached for familiar positions: migration caps, values tests, assimilation requirements, rarely with any clarity on what those words actually mean in practice. Taken together, the debate has been loud, reactive and not nearly serious enough.
The data, however, tells an entirely different story. Consider two measures: educational attainment and economic contribution. On education: according to the 2021 Census, 68 per cent of Indian-born migrants hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, almost double the 36 per cent of Australian-born residents. Nearly a third hold postgraduate degrees.
On economic contribution: Indian-born migrants have the highest proportion of top income earners of any group at 18.2 per cent, compared to 15.9 per cent of Australian-born residents, and the lowest share in the bottom income bracket.
As of 2020, Indian-born taxpayers contributed $5.8 billion annually in income tax, nearly two-thirds of what the federal government committed to social and affordable housing in 2025. The community has grown by nearly 300,000 people since then. The current figure is almost certainly significantly higher. And yet Indian-Australians are bearing the brunt of a polarising debate over immigration and resources.
The housing pressure is real. The infrastructure gaps are real. But these are structural failures with no meaningful connection to which community is growing fastest. Australia’s housing shortage and infrastructure gaps are problems of planning and investment, not of migration origin.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Stranded Sydney series captures this precisely. If anything, it is the Indian-Australian community that appears among those most visibly bearing the costs. When population growth outpaces planning for long enough, frustration needs somewhere to go. A large, visible, fast-growing community like the Indian-Australian community becomes a convenient target. That is wrong.
It is a failure of planning, not of people. Definitely not of a community contributing at least $5.8 billion in income tax annually.
There is a deeper incoherence here. Australia has staked a significant portion of its economic and geopolitical future on its relationship with India – negotiating landmark trade agreements, deepening defence partnerships, and partnering in global formations like the Quad. And the data shows this relationship is already paying off closer to home.
Every 1 per cent increase in Indian-born residents boosts Australian exports by 0.46 per cent and is associated with the creation of 123 medium and 6 large businesses. The nearly one million Indian-born residents living here are not separate from the bilateral relationship Australia says it wants. Treating them as a burden while courting their home country as a partner simply makes no sense.
Australia is at a significant moment in its history. The demographic shift is real, the pressures are significant, and the questions they raise deserve serious, evidence-based answers. What this moment does not deserve is a debate that ignores the evidence.
The Indian Australian community is not a problem to be managed. It is a story of educational achievement, economic contribution, and a deepening human connection between two nations that have staked their futures on each other. It deserves to be seen for what it actually is, one of the most significant positive additions to modern Australia.
Nikhil Kulkarni is an author and a technology and business leader.
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Nikhil Kulkarni is an author and a technology and business leader in the Australia–India ecosystem.From our partners
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