The Liberal-National Coalition would cut temporary visa holders by about 650,000 over four years and add 100,000 skilled migrant visas, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said Tuesday. Net overseas migration would drop from 292,000 to 100,000 a year in the first two years of a Coalition government. The plan shifts the burden onto temporary migrants while prioritizing selected skilled workers.
Who Gets a Visa
Taylor said the Coalition would abolish temporary graduate visas, while keeping limited post-study pathways for PhD, health and education graduates and people studying at regional universities. The party would cap international student commencements at 240,000, restrict most students from bringing dependents and tie each student visa to the institution where the student enrolled.
The Coalition would halve the humanitarian intake to 10,000 a year and give people seeking to make an onshore asylum claim 30 days to do so. According to the ABC, bridging visas would see the sharpest cut, from about 414,000 to 20,000. Migrants making a second or later temporary visa application would generally have to leave Australia and apply offshore, Taylor said.
The plan would also change which permanent applicants get priority. The Coalition would weigh age, income, English-language proficiency and skilled partners. It would fast-track construction workers and prioritize employer-sponsored migration in regional Australia, while adding about 60,000 temporary skilled visa holders and 15,000 new skilled project visas a year for major projects.
Taylor said the Coalition would double the talent and innovation allocation to 7,000 through a new AUKUS and Five Eyes visa. The Guardian reported that it remained unclear how the party could increase skilled visas, currently demand-driven, by about 100,000 people in selected industries. Labor said uncapped visa numbers could rise only if migrants arrived without a job offer.
The Budget Case
Taylor said a student or temporary graduate visa holder contributed 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”: “We are very, very confident that that simple approach – reducing the numbers but raising the standards – ensures that it's budget neutral and will strengthen the economy, improve productivity, improve competitiveness, improve the skills.”
The Coalition released no costings or modelling on the broader economic impact. Taylor said the party had worked with the Parliamentary Budget Office and promised to release costings closer to the 2028 federal election. He described the policy as neutral for the federal budget.
Taylor said the cuts would ease pressure on roads, schools, infrastructure and housing. He also accused Labor of relying on population growth for economic prosperity, saying the government's “whole economic strategy” was based on it. The Coalition's migration target sits below Labor's targets of 245,000 by June the following year and 225,000 by the middle of 2028.
The Coalition would scrap Labor's caps on second- and third-year working holiday-maker visa extensions and raise fees instead, exempting people who completed required regional work. Taylor said the plan would still leave room for working holiday-makers needed to pick fruit and work in rural and regional hospitality.
Political Pressure and Objections
The policy followed months of migration debate in Canberra as One Nation gained support with a tough-on-migration platform. One Nation proposed cutting 750,000 temporary visas over three years, pushing net overseas migration into negative territory, then targeting 130,000 in the fourth year or a “ceiling” of 130,000 reviewed annually.
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce said, “I congratulate the Coalition for basically coming up with our policy.” He added, “We are moving both the Labor Party, we're moving the Coalition.” One Nation leader Pauline Hanson called the Coalition's position “a photocopy” of her party's policy and said Labor and the Coalition had been “dragged kicking and screaming” into the debate.
Nationals leader Matt Canavan said temporary migrants undercut Australian wages and described the measures as a plan to “take back our country.” Taylor criticized universities, claiming one of Australia's biggest exports sells visa pathways rather than higher education.
Business and asylum-seeker advocates criticized the proposal. 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.
Jana Favero of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said the Coalition was focusing on migration rather than rent, mortgages or food costs. “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.