Labor will try to salvage its long-awaited migration plan by stopping students from bringing family members and targeting the ballooning number of overstayers, as the Coalition splits over Pauline Hanson’s push to achieve negative migration.
After weeks of cabinet squabbling over how to reduce the intake by 80,000, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke will front the National Press Club on Thursday with a plan to rein in the number of temporary migrants, which has grown to 3 million and turned into a top-level concern of voters battling high inflation and housing costs.
After Burke’s speech on migration was postponed last minute in early August to work out the economic impacts, his plan tightens control over a visa program he argues has lacked sufficient oversight since the Howard era.
Labor aims to enforce more departures and deportations once visas expire, restrict visa hopping and rein in surging onshore asylum claims, which have been exploited by foreigners trying to extend their stay while waiting on appeals.
Sources familiar with the policy said it would curtail or ban the growing number of visas issued to the families of students, among a series of other moves to bring down numbers. Nearly 90,000 secondary visas were issued to partners and other family members of students. Hanson has proposed a similar plan on partner visas.
Burke pushed back on anxiety among rural MPs about a backpacker shortage when they need farmhands, arguing: “Some people seem to feel you can get net overseas migration down while having the same number of migrants.
“We need to make sure that we deal with the numbers overall and do so in a sensible, targeted way that provides the easiest pathway through for the Australian economy,” he said in parliament.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been grappling with the migration policy for weeks since Burke’s speech was cancelled. He told colleagues last week that he did not want to see Burke announce a speech at a prestigious forum like the press club that would draw greater attention to an issue being dominated by Hanson.
Despite this, Burke announced on Wednesday that he would detail his moves in a rescheduled speech on Thursday – the same day as the Australian Bureau of Statistics releases potentially damaging migration data, and a day before Albanese heads to New York for a United Nations gathering.
All major parties are facing pressure to deal with economic and cultural concerns about Australia’s elevated migration levels, which peaked after the pandemic. Australia’s population growth has been well above peer democracies this century. About 30 per cent of 25- to 29-year-olds in Australia are on temporary visas.
One Nation escalated the migration debate on Monday, revealing a plan to cut 750,000 temporary migrants over three years, triggering a temporary reduction in Australia’s population. The party released no modelling to counter economists’ claims that this would induce a recession.
Hanson’s rise in the polls has been boosted by her anti-migration stance, and One Nation is seen as the party best placed to tackle the issue in this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor, which also revealed that 40 per cent of voters think Labor’s target is too high, and around two-thirds favour hardline measures to slash the intake.
But Hanson’s hardline plan has caused ructions in the opposition, which refused to work with Labor to pass new migration laws this week, partly out of fear of being labelled weak by Hanson.
In a recent meeting of top Coalition MPs, Nationals leader Matt Canavan proposed a similarly large cut to the stock of temporary migrants as Hanson. Canavan said that the net overseas migration figure was not the perfect metric and that to achieve his aims, the net figure might need to go negative for a while.
Four senior Coalition sources said that Opposition Leader Angus Taylor was firmly against Canavan’s idea. Taylor has been playing such a hands-on role in formulating the opposition’s plan that some colleagues have become annoyed at the delays.
The opposition, trailing One Nation in the polls, will announce in coming weeks a policy to lower net migration to a figure below the previously announced 170,000. The lower figure will reflect expectations of lower housing supply over coming years, according to opposition sources.
Taylor’s decision not to work with Labor on migration legislation, which was the government’s first preference, has left Burke with fewer options. Labor has proposed laws including banning asylum claims after a few months of being in Australia and curtailing students’ right of appeal to extend their stay.
The measures on Thursday will be enacted via regulations, which do not require new laws to pass parliament.
On Wednesday, Taylor accused Labor of creating a $7 billion budget black hole after Labor reversed plans to revert to a lower refugee intake.
Hanson, meanwhile, said Labor’s mooted plans on backpackers would “throw regional Australia under the bus” by smashing tourism businesses that rely on working holidaymakers, days after she dismissed criticism from economists on her own policies.
“And given they have never hit a single migration target, even after moving the goalposts, you cannot trust this Labor government on immigration,” she said.
Burke will not announce a cut in numbers. Rather, he will outline new methods to bring net migration down from 305,000 to 225,000 over two years.
The government also wants to cut back on bridging visas, which have blown out under its watch, and make it harder for migrants to use the Administrative Review Tribunal to extend their stay. In the budget, Labor said it would rework the skills program to make sure Australia was bringing in higher-skilled migrants. Labor has examined restricting work rights for temporary migrants whose claims for asylum protection were rejected.
The title of Burke’s speech is “The work of managing the migration program: who arrives, who stays, who leaves”.
This masthead has previously reported that Burke is considering enhancing deportation efforts for the 77,000 unlawful non-citizens in Australia and curbing backpacker visas.
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Paul Sakkalis Chief Political Correspondent. He previously covered Victorian politics and won a Walkley award and the 2025 Press Gallery Journalist of the Year. Contact him securely on Signal @paulsakkal.14.Connect viaXoremail.
