Taylor sets Coalition migration at 100,000 and says 650,000 temporary visas would go

Angus Taylor said on Tuesday that a Coalition government would cut Australia's net overseas migration from 292,000 to 100,000 in the first two years, and that 650,000 temporary visa holders would leave the system under the policy. He called it the biggest cut to immigration in the country's history. The announcement, made in Sydney with deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume, is the Coalition's election migration plan, not a change in law.

Net overseas migration is arrivals of long-term residents minus departures. Taylor's path would hold the number at 100,000 in years one and two, then lift it to 160,000 by year four. Labor's stated aim is to bring the same measure down to 225,000 within two years. One Nation has proposed three years of net negative migration. The Coalition is the last of the main parties to put a full number on the table, after months of argument in Canberra and a rise in One Nation's polling on the same subject.

The cuts fall on temporary visas. Taylor said temporary graduate visas would be abolished entirely. The refugee intake would be halved, to 10,000. Applications would have to be lodged offshore, which he said would shrink the stock of bridging visas. Against that, he said 100,000 skilled migrant visas would be added. The arithmetic he offered is a large reduction in temporary places and a smaller addition in skilled permanent places, with the net migration target doing the binding work.

What 100,000 would change, and what it would not

A fall from 292,000 to 100,000 is a cut of 192,000 people a year on the net measure, if the target is met. That is not the same as 650,000 people leaving in a single year. The 650,000 figure is the stock of temporary visa holders Taylor said the policy would remove from the system over the life of the plan. Temporary graduates, bridging-visa holders and other temporary categories overlap. A person who loses a graduate visa may already be counted in the net figure if they depart, or may shift to another visa if they do not. The two numbers should be read separately. One is a flow target. The other is a stock Taylor wants reduced.

He argued the cut would not damage the budget, and that it would ease pressure on roads, schools, infrastructure and housing. "Australia should be a home, not a hotel. And right now, we're seeing under Labor a guest worker economy," he said. The budget claim is a forecast, not a published costing in the remarks reported on Tuesday. Housing is the political link. Rents and prices have been the argument through which migration policy is being sold in this campaign. A lower net number does not, by itself, add dwellings. It reduces one source of extra household formation if the people who would have arrived do not arrive.

The refugee cut is a separate decision inside the same plan. Halving the intake to 10,000 is a humanitarian programme change, not a labour-market one. Temporary graduate visas are a third decision. Abolishing them closes a route used by people who finish Australian degrees and stay to work. Taylor's addition of 100,000 skilled visas is the offer to employers who will say the graduate route and the temporary stock are where they find staff. Whether those skilled places are filled, and from which occupations, was not set out in the Sydney remarks.

The election context is plain. The vote is on 7 November. Taylor is opposition leader. The policy is a bid to occupy ground One Nation has used, without adopting One Nation's net-negative target. Labor can answer with its own 225,000 path and argue that 100,000 is too low for the sectors that hire. The Coalition can answer that 225,000 is a smaller cut than voters were promised. The numbers that will be tested first are the ones Taylor put on the record: 292,000 now, 100,000 for two years, 160,000 by year four, 650,000 temporary places out, 10,000 refugees, 100,000 skilled places in.

None of those figures binds a department until a government is formed and the visa rules are rewritten. Offshore application rules, the abolition of a visa subclass, and a refugee ceiling are administrative and legislative acts. Tuesday's press conference fixes the targets the Coalition will be asked to defend for the next month. The gap between 100,000 and Labor's 225,000 is the comparison voters can actually make.