The Coalition’s migration plan promises dramatic cuts to net overseas migration and the temporary visa population, but key measures are inconsistent, administratively weak and in some cases beyond government control.
The Coalition has finally articulated an immigration policy which can be judged on its merits in relation to the policies of Labor and One Nation. The policy aims for annual net overseas migration of 100,000 initially – Labor aims for 225,000 annually by 2027–2028 and One Nation aims for negative net migration initially. The current forecast for 2026–2027 is 245,000.
Australia’s immigration program serves many interests, both urban and rural, across the country – specific skilled labour shortages in both high-tech and low-tech industries, the education industry, health and aged care industries, hospitality industry, farm labour and harvesting (while also making space for partners of Australian citizens and residents and humanitarian entrants). Dramatic cuts to numbers are not easy and governments normally aim to spread the pain in a balanced way.
The balance is missing in this package. Most of the cuts fall on international students – both in terms of entry quotas and further stay (in the form of eliminating Temporary Graduate Visas). The offshore humanitarian programme is to be halved. Permanent skilled migration is to be expanded and Labor’s restrictions on working holidaymaker numbers and criteria are to be reversed.
This seems to be an attempt to preserve the interests of the Coalition’s business and rural constituency, at the expense of the constituencies for education and refugees which are perhaps seen to be on the Labor side of the ledger. Nevertheless, business organisations are still concerned at the economic impact of the proposed cuts.
The Coalition’s declared aspiration to have more people as permanent entrants and a reduced temporary migrant population is positive but lacks consistency. National Party leader Matt Canavan says that Australia should be treated as “a home, not a hotel” or a “campground”, but he’s perfectly happy for working holidaymakers to be camping in rural areas at current levels to provide labour for rural industry.
There are other oddities in the policy package, such as the special arrangements for Project Visas for projects such as AUKUS and Five Eyes related activity. One wonders why the normal skilled migration system with expedited processes can’t cope with these needs without the need for further complexity in the immigration system.
Mercifully, Partner visas are left untouched in the policy. Perhaps it would be hard to devise a way to manage them more harshly than occurs now.
Coalition policy not only aims to cut annual net overseas migration to 100,000 initially but also promises to reduce the temporary visa population in Australia by 650,000 by 2031–32.
These are big cuts. Both seem unachievable.
The Liberal Party website still says the Coalition will “cap net overseas migration each year below the number of new homes completed”.
The problem here is that the government simply does not have any legal power to cap net overseas migration and many elements of it are entirely outside government control (e.g. returning Australian citizens are counted in net overseas migration). Also, as many have pointed out, the idea that every migrant occupies one house is not how housing occupancy works and relating movements strictly to housing completions is unworkable.
The planned 650,000 reduction of the existing population in Australia on temporary visas is to be achieved mainly by a dramatic reduction in the populations on Bridging Visas and Temporary Graduate Visas.
Leaving aside the merits of the underlying policies, another essential element in achieving drastic reductions to the domestic temporary visa population is that changes to laws need to be backed up by speedy decision-making and effective compliance measures which encourage voluntary departures and, if necessary, involuntary departures.
Ironically, the Coalition, under the Dutton/Pezzullo regime, effectively eliminated the immigration compliance mechanism needed to achieve this. The Coalition’s plan for the Department of Home Affairs to police overseas students working beyond their permitted working hours suffers from the same problem. The Coalition will have to be prepared to reinvest in immigration compliance for these measures to have any meaning.
One of the measures, aimed at reducing the use of non-meritorious domestic asylum applications to prolong stay in Australia, is to require that domestic asylum applications be made within 30 days of the arrival. This approach is problematic because the persecution problem experienced by a refugee may not actually occur within 30 days of their arrival and many challenges can be expected.
A more sensible approach might have been to reinstate the Howard-era legislative requirement for asylum applications to be decided within 90 days. Quick primary decisions by the department, backed up by a re-energised appeal system, completely remove the incentive for non-meritorious applications.
The Coalition’s aim to halve the annual humanitarian program from 20,000 to 10,000 visas is just unworthy in the context of both Australia’s, and the Coalition’s, past policies. This would reduce the planned annual humanitarian intake to its lowest level this century (apart from COVID years) at a time when displaced populations around the world are at record levels. Surely things in Australia are not that bad.
A lot has been said over the years by the Coalition justifying its harsh approach to maritime asylum seekers by saying it needed to act in this way to preserve room for the continuance of a substantial humanitarian program. The Coalition seems to have forgotten this.
Finally, “nation building” seems to be out of fashion in the crafting of Coalition policy because there is no mention of it. Perhaps their policymakers should have a look at a newly released book entitled Nation building – how immigration made Australia, written by their former colleague and longest serving immigration minister Philip Ruddock.
Peter Hughes is a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development. He had a long career in the Commonwealth Department of Immigration and Citizenship, retiring as Deputy Secretary in 2011. He was awarded the Public Service Medal in 2005 for outstanding public service in the development of policies and programs to increase citizenship, multicultural harmony and the settlement of refugees.