A Canberra academic has sparked debate by saying she supports big business political donations because without them the government would have to listen to voters and stop mass immigration.
Australian National University senior lecturer and political scientist Dr Jill Sheppard made the statements, which she described as “contrarian”, during a live recording of the Democracy Sausage podcast hosted by Mark Kenny, Director of ANU’s Australia Studies Institute, last week.
During a discussion about the rise in popularity of One Nation, Dr Sheppard said her “contrarian view on political donations is that money from big business is actually good, it gets us to a healthy equilibrium, especially on issue like immigration, and can mitigate against these populist tendencies”.
Wow! Mask off moment for the woke lefties at the Universities re migration.
Essentially fuck what the average voter wants on the migration debate and they’re glad big business has money and power to sway the public conversation to keep net migration high.
Maybe the should ask… pic.twitter.com/lAnnvFUUHi
— Nath_Sparky (@NatedawgO7) March 2, 2026
When the host said he was “puzzled by that” and asked her to explain, Dr Sheppard replied: “The median voter is anti-migration, maybe not in net terms, maybe they don’t want to go full One Nation, but if you said to them, and I run surveys, if you say to them in any configuration of immigration questions, ‘do you want more migration?’ most of them will say no. And whatever’s happening in their brain to get them to that position I can’t really say, but something is happening.
“But business wants migration. Business wants free trade, business wants open borders, business wants a lot of positions that we around the table I think share as good socially and economically liberal outcomes.
“I think that if you are a political party and you have to get money, you don’t have to, but you know, the option is there to get money from Woolies and Coles and the Hotels Association, yes that leads to some pretty perverse outcomes, but if the alternative is just listening to the median voter, who on migration is probably far beyond where we are right now, maybe there’s, look, I’m being Pollyanna tonight.
“I’m just floating the idea that it’s maybe not the worst thing that One Nation, as they scale up, has to talk to business more, I think that is actually going to be a moderating influence.”
Dr Sheppard’s comments were described as a “mask off moment for woke lefties at the universities” in a popular post on X on Monday.
“Essentially fuck what the average voter wants on the migration debate and they’re glad big business has money and power to sway the public conversation to keep net migration high,” said Nath Sparky.
“Maybe they should ask themselves WHY big business likes high migration because I’ll tell them. It adds to more supply of labour which pushes down wages and there’s no need for big business to innovate or change to compete and grab market share if there’s just more people to sell their products too.
It’s heaps funny what people in politics will say when they think only people that agree with them are listening.”
Economic analyst Tarric Brooker said: “It’s not often I am lost for words, but god damn.”
“Yo Jill Sheppard, thanks for saying the quiet part out loud for once. You leftists are all simps for big business and you will ally with anyone that supports White genocide,” said another X user.
Dr Sheppard has previously written opinion pieces for national broadcaster the ABC, including one from October 2016 on poll results showing 50% of Australians wanted a ban on Muslim immigration where she said it may “be in polling companies’ interest to incite outrage and indignation”.
Header image: Dr Jill Sheppard (ANU).
