View from The Hill: Liberals, One Nation and Labor all have immigration details up in the air

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

The Liberals’ final immigration policy number won’t be released this year, their spokesman Jonno Duniam has revealed, adding more uncertainty to the nation’s debate on one of its hottest issues.

This comes as One Nation’s position remains confused and Labor has yet to announce changes to facilitate meeting its target of a much reduced intake, delayed from earlier this month.

While still insisting people would see the policy “in the near future”, Duniam said it had to take into account all the factors and circumstances that the world and Australia would face in 2028, when the election is due.

“We’re in 2026. The world in 2028 […] is going to be very, very different so we need to make sure we are as relevant to that point in time as possible.”

The timing is complicated by the fact Duniam, who said he would stay until the policy was finished, is due to leave parliament by the end of this year.

Meanwhile Barnaby Joyce tried to clarify One Nation’s policy after its new MP David Farley suggested the party’s position, in terms of total numbers, would not be all that different from the government’s.

Farley told the ABC at the weekend that above the 130,000 Net Overseas Migration (NOM) figure Pauline Hanson has nominated, there could be another 100,000 people under One Nation, including those under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme (PALM), as well as other workers, notably aged care workers.

When it was put to him that the number was not too different from the government’s target he said, “Well, not too different, but the reality is where do we need them. We don’t need them in the great urban metroplex.”

Last week, speaking on a Conversation podcast, Farley put the “rotating” temporary workers he envisaged above the NOM at a more modest 40,000.

On Monday Joyce reaffirmed One Nation’s commitment to a NOM of 130,000, and said of Farley, “When people are new in parliament, they can get things incorrect”.

But Joyce also confirmed that the PALM workers did not mostly fall under the NOM because they were not here long enough to be counted in it. According to the PALM website, PALM workers number about 33,000.

“If you’re here for less than 12 months of [every] 16 months, it’s not part of the net overseas migration numbers. Everyone agrees with that,” he said.

As One Nation tries to get its lines straight on immigration, Hanson deleted a tweet from earlier this year, with a figure which, on the maths, would have had the NOM in negative territory.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese repeated the government’s budget’s numbers. But the government has not yet provided a date for Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke to announce its proposed changes to achieve that fall.

“Our numbers are in the budget,” Albanese told a news conference in Western Australia. “We’re working over two years down to 225,000 [from the current around 300,000].

"What David Farley said on Sunday was that he believed the numbers that Labor have come up with are about right. It’s exactly where he would be positioned as well. And he does that from the perspective of understanding the importance for the agricultural sector of skilled workers and others.”

Duniam flagged the opposition’s proposed cuts to immigration would target students and those on temporary graduate visas and secondary applicants.

He said the contribution to the NOM from working holiday makers (backpackers) was minimal. “We are not going to be heading down the path of trying to tackle that group because they are not the big problem,” he said.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.