The federal Coalition would cut net overseas migration to 100,000 a year for its first two years in government, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor announced in Sydney on Tuesday. The plan would also reduce the number of core temporary visa holders in Australia by about 650,000 over four years.
Under the plan, net migration would be 100,000 in 2028-29 and 2029-30, then rise to 130,000 and then 160,000 by 2031-32. After that, the Coalition would cap it each year below the number of new homes completed. The permanent Migration Program would stay at 185,000 places, the same level Labor has set for 2026-27.
Most of the reduction comes from temporary visas, not from permanent residents. Temporary Graduate visas would be abolished except for PhD, health and education students and graduates of regional universities, and that category would fall from 271,200 holders to about 10,000. Bridging and temporary protection visas would fall from 414,700 to 20,000, because second and later temporary visa applications would have to be lodged from outside Australia. International student commencements would be cut to about 240,000 a year, and the humanitarian intake would be halved to 10,000.
“Australia should be a home, not a hotel," Taylor said. Nationals leader Matt Canavan said the country was "not a campground". Taylor said the lower numbers would "take pressure off roads, schools, infrastructure, and houses".”
The Coalition says the plan is budget neutral, with a small gain of about $260 million over four years based on work with the Parliamentary Budget Office. It released no costings or economic modelling, and says those will come before the next election.
The starting point is lower than the political argument suggests. The Bureau of Statistics put net overseas migration at 292,100 in the year to March, down 5.6 per cent on the year before. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke's office said last month that the budget forecasts 245,000 this financial year and 225,000 in 2027-28.
Some numbers would go up. The plan would add 15,000 skilled project visas a year for major projects and up to 5,000 more highly skilled workers, double the talent visa allocation to 7,000, and create an agriculture visa from 2030. It would also reverse Labor's ballot and caps on second- and third-year working holiday visas. Deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume said: "Pubs will still be staffed, fruit will still be picked, and houses will be built, but the system will be managed."
Before the policy was released, Veterans' Affairs Minister Matt Keogh said cuts of that size would be "absolutely catastrophic for the Australian economy". He also said the Coalition would have to explain "which hospitals are now not going to have enough staff to operate". Burke had not responded by mid-afternoon.
One Nation, whose own plan would make net migration negative for three years, said the Coalition had copied it. Pauline Hanson said the Coalition was "waving a photocopy of One Nation's immigration policy". Barnaby Joyce, now a One Nation MP, said the plan "shows an endorsement of where One Nation is off to".
The housing cap is the part of the plan that has not been defined. The Coalition has not said how completions would be counted, or what happens to the migration program in a year when building falls short. Those details, and the costings, are due before the 2028 election.
