The Liberal-National Coalition would cut about 650,000 temporary visas over four years, halve Australia's humanitarian intake to 10,000 a year and abolish temporary graduate visas, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said Tuesday. The plan would push net overseas migration down to 100,000 a year during the first two years of a Coalition government. It's a sharp cut. No costings or published modelling explain what it would do to the economy.
Taylor called it "the biggest cut to immigration in the history of this country." He put it bluntly. "Australia should be a home, not a hotel," he said. "And right now, we're seeing under Labor a guest worker economy." The target would climb to 130,000 in the third year and 160,000 in the fourth, compared with an Australian Bureau of Statistics figure of 292,100 in the year to March.
Who Is Affected
People already inside Australia's visa system would bear the heaviest burden. The ABC reported that bridging visas would fall from about 414,000 to 20,000. Migrants rely on these visas while officials process applications for permanent residency, skilled work or family rights. Under the Coalition plan, anyone making a second or later temporary visa application would generally have to leave Australia and apply offshore.
International students would face a cap of 240,000 commencements, a ban on bringing dependents for most, and a rule tying each visa to a single institution. Temporary graduate visas would disappear, leaving limited post-study pathways for PhD, health and education graduates and students at regional universities. The Coalition would also impose a 30-day limit for onshore asylum claims.
Jana Favero of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said Taylor was out of touch with everyday Australians. "Instead of focusing on the real problems – how to help people pay their rent, manage their mortgage or put food on the table – the Coalition is joining the far right's blame game," she said.
The Economic Gap
Taylor said the policy would be budget neutral, but the Coalition offered no costings and no modelling of its broader economic impact. He said the party had worked with the Parliamentary Budget Office and would publish costings closer to the 2028 federal election. The Guardian reported the Coalition hadn't clarified whether the independent PBO had modelled the policy at all.
Taylor argued that a student or temporary graduate visa holder contributes an average of $7,000 to $14,000 in taxes, compared with more than $30,000 for a temporary skilled visa holder. He called the economics "simple."
Business isn't convinced. Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry boss Andrew McKellar said arbitrary migration targets were misguided and would hurt the economy. "Business rejects the false binary that Australia must choose either fewer migrants with higher skills or more migrants with lower skills," he said.
The Guardian also said it was unclear how the Coalition could increase skilled visas, currently demand-driven, by about 100,000 in selected industries. Labor said the only way to increase uncapped visa numbers would be to let migrants arrive without a job offer. The cost and difficulty of eliminating bridging visas also remain unresolved.
The Politics of the Squeeze
The announcement follows months of migration debate in Canberra, as One Nation gained support on a tough-on-migration platform. One Nation had proposed cutting 750,000 temporary visas over three years. MP Barnaby Joyce said, "I congratulate the Coalition for basically coming up with our policy." When asked about economic effects, he dismissed the need to cost policies.
Pauline Hanson called the Coalition's position "a photocopy" of her party's policy. Nationals leader Matt Canavan said the measures would "take back our country," adding, "We are a country, not a campground."
Labor's own changes take effect Friday and already target students, their families and working holiday-makers, capping second-year working holiday places at 45,000 and third-year places at 5,000. The ABC reported Labor is aiming for net overseas migration of 245,000 by June next year and 225,000 by the middle of 2028. The Coalition's targets would go further, bringing migration to its lowest level outside the pandemic since 2004.
Why This Matters: Migration policy now moves on political momentum rather than evidence. The Guardian described all three players—Labor, the Coalition and One Nation—as introducing cuts backed by economic analysis it characterized as sometimes scant. The people who'd absorb the shock aren't abstractions. They're students mid-degree, families waiting on visa decisions and asylum seekers facing a 30-day clock to make a claim, in a country that would halve its humanitarian intake. Business groups warn of damage to the economy, while no costings exist to test the budget-neutral promise. When rights and livelihoods depend on figures that haven't been independently verified, transparent, accountable policymaking becomes harder to ignore.