Anti-immigration protesters have been slammed for heading to a yum cha restaurant in Sydney’s CBD shortly after attending the March For Australia rally.
The demonstrations on Sunday, August 31, 2025, drew tens of thousands across Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Canberra.
But one photo posted online showed three people draped in Australian flags sitting inside a Chinese restaurant, a sight that quickly sparked ridicule.
“LOL …. Such hypocrisy,” one user wrote.
“Multiculturalism has gone too far, pass the soy sauce,” another joked.
“I’ll take the sweet and sour pork and get out of me country!” a third added.
“They’re literally the same as the MAGAs we have in the US Global hypocrisy,” another said.
“Chinese meal and his Chinese-made flag! My man is doing his part for the Chinese economy,” one commenter quipped.
“If you don’t want immigration you don’t get the benefits of that,” another argued.
Not everyone agreed, with some defending the diners and claiming the photo proved they weren’t opposed to immigration entirely.
“This is put up as hypocrisy, but backfires because it’s evidence they’re not anti-immigration, just mass immigration, which is what the rally purported to be,” one person wrote.
“Saying we need to massively slow immigration doesn’t mean you hate Asians. It just means you think Australians should have a chance of getting their own home, before we import more yoga instructors and dog walkers,” another said.
“I don’t see the conflict here. I know Asians who think the immigration levels are off the charts. It’s not black and white,” added another.
Western Sydney University Professor Gregory Noble said the photo revealed “a degree of irony at least and hypocrisy at worst”, but pointed to deeper issues.
“It reflects a lack of understanding of Australia’s past and its reliance on immigration as a nation- and economy-building strategy since British colonisation,” Noble said.
He warned that far-right voices were overshadowing legitimate concerns about immigration.
“It wasn’t clear whether there was a consensus amongst those marching about what they see as the problem and why,” he said.
“It is also evidence of the growing public boldness of the radical right in Australia, and their use of Trump-like strategies.”
Monash University Associate Professor Ben Wellings said the protests highlighted wider distrust of politics.
“The anti-immigration protests appeared to draw together groups and individuals with a wide range of views but many of whom share some sort of mistrust of established politics,” he said.
“This anger and disaffection – sometimes based on misinformation – can be spread via social media which amplifies outrage.”
Meanwhile, Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) said it had “officially distanced itself” from the March For Australia, saying its concerns were environmental, not nationalist.
SPA National President Peter Strachan said he and others were discouraged from attending “because of the likelihood that its agenda would be hijacked by a small group of unsavoury and noisy nationalists.”
“A survey shows that while most Australians like immigration, they think that the numbers are too high,” Strachan said.
“The recent pace of net overseas migration at over 350,000 per year is well above the sustainable 70,000 per year that worked well over the four decades leading to 2003.”
SPA said its focus was on sustainability, water security, cost of living and housing, and that it supported cutting overall migration levels, but not ending immigration entirely.
Images: 7NEWS
