Increasing anti-migrant sentiment in Australia has set off online rumours that home goods store Bunnings had gotten rid of its weekly sausage sizzle in favour of serving Indian food. A representative for the popular chain told AFP they have made "no change" to their weekly sizzle -- a hallowed pastime in the nation to cook and serve sausages in bread. The image used to depict the false claim is AI-generated.
"BREAKING: Bunnings has fallen. The classic Aussie sausage sizzle is dead," declares an X user on August 3, 2026, in a post shared more than 280 times.
"In its place: Butter Chicken, Samosas and 'Authentic Indian Food from the Heart of India' right under the green canopy. Not even the great Aussie tradition of a snag can be left alone by 'diversity'."
Accompanying the post was an image of three men beaming at a food stall in front of Bunnings, offering up a menu of Indian food.
"Is nothing in Australia sacred anymore? Our culture is slowly being erased," the user lamented.
An honoured tradition in Australian culture, a sausage sizzle is a social gathering where people buy sausages on white bread slices to raise money for charity or communities ( archived link).
Bunnings typically holds a sausage sizzle on the weekends at its various branches to allow grassroots community groups to raise money ( archived link).
The anger over the posts about Indian food being served at Bunnings comes as Australia sees a rise in anti-immigration rhetoric -- fuelled in part by a series of marches held across Australia since 2025 -- and criticism of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his centre-left Labor Party (archived here and here).
At the same time, the Indian diaspora in Australia has increased in recent years, with the latest population statistics showing that the country's largest group of residents born overseas was from the South Asian nation ( archived link).
Similar posts circulated on X as well as on Facebook, with social media users criticising the purported fall of an Aussie tradition.
"Australia is cooked," said one, while another said it was "time to boycott Bunnings".
But Bunnings told AFP that the image "is fake".
"We have made no change to our weekly sausage sizzle," they told AFP in an email on August 4.
There are also clear visual discrepancies in the image to indicate that it was created using AI -- like how the sauce bottles look melted together and how one of the men's fingers appears to be gnarled.
Running the image through the OpenAI detection platform revealed that it has a SynthID watermark indicating it was made using OpenAI's tools ( archived link).
AFP has previously debunked claims fuelled by anger over immigration in Australia.