Does One Nation’s migration policy actually add up?

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More than one third of voters regard One Nation as the best party to handle immigration – more than any other party, according to this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor.

But behind the rhetoric is a policy that doesn’t add up. As Pauline Hanson climbs the polls, this masthead crunched the numbers and asked immigration and economics experts what they mean.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson wants to drastically cut migration - but what would that actually mean?Ross Swanborough

One Nation’s plan to cap visas at 130,000 places a year would lead to negative migration – hurting crucial industries and plunging the country into greater debt. That is, if it’s even possible to execute.

How many people are migrating to Australia?

The figure Australia uses to measure its migrant intake is called “net overseas migration”, or NOM, which counts how many people arrive in Australia for long-term stays minus those who depart.

This covers foreign visa holders who stay for at least 12 months, and Australians who leave and return to the country, but excludes short-term overseas visitors.

The NOM has been the subject of fierce political debate since it reached record numbers when borders reopened after the COVID-19 pandemic. There were 538,000 net new migrants in 2022-23, dropping to 429,000 in 2023-24 and 306,000 in 2024-25.

What is the makeup of migrants to Australia?

The vast majority of people who contribute to net migration are on temporary visas – international students, working holidaymakers and skilled workers. About 363,000 of them entered Australia in 2024-25, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, while 148,000 left the country.

Australia also gives out permanent visas. These are capped at 185,000 places, with most going to skilled work visas. It also includes the family program and partner visas. Most of these people are already in Australia when they get permanency – so they don’t contribute as much to NOM.

In the last financial year, 88,000 permanent visa holders arrived in Australia while 18,600 left.

How would One Nation’s immigration limits work?

One Nation’s proposal is to cap all visas at 130,000. It does not specify whether this is temporary visas, permanent visas, or both – although Hanson has previously said the figure applies to arrivals.

This analysis assumes, then, that the 130,000 figure captures both temporary and permanent visa holders who have come from offshore (and assumes One Nation does not mean visitor visas).

To get down to that figure, Hanson would have to make significant cuts to most types of migration.

She has previously said she could offer exemptions for visas under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme, which deploys about 33,000 Pacific workers each year across the nation’s farms and abattoirs. They might sit outside her 130,000 cap.

One Nation would also have to keep current numbers for family visas. Immigration expert Abul Rizvi, a former department deputy secretary, said the government does not have legal powers to cap visas for spouses and dependent children.

“Assume she sticks to the current level [of family visas], which is about 44,000. Then you’ve got students, skilled temporary, temporary graduates, working holidaymakers, New Zealanders,” he said. All of those would have to fit within about 86,000 remaining places.

In the 2024-25 financial year, there were about 234,000 visas issued to offshore students, 126,000 to temporary graduates, 321,000 to working holidaymakers and 130,500 temporary skilled visas.

There were also 1.98 million arrivals from New Zealand – but data is not immediately clear on how many stayed long term. Under the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement, New Zealanders are automatically granted visas on arrival and can live and work in Australia indefinitely.

“I don’t know how Hanson proposes to deal with NZ citizens and the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement. She may not have thought about it,” Rizvi said.

It would be a major barrier to her targets – as would the many working holidaymaker arrangements Australia has with other countries, which allow for uncapped places.

Visas issued to British backpackers surged to 79,000 in 2024-25 – more than half of Hanson’s cap – under the terms of a free-trade agreement.

These agreements would need to be renegotiated to make Hanson’s policy a reality.

What would be the consequence of One Nation’s policy?

Hanson has emphasised that her policy still involves bringing people into the country. “My policy is not anti-immigration. It is a control to mass migration,” Hanson said in May. “We still have a policy of 130,000 people coming in.”

But assuming that One Nation can execute its 130,000 limit – and gets around any illegalities or diplomatic fights in the process – the impact would almost certainly mean negative migration.

That’s because of departures. Last financial year, 148,000 temporary visa holders and 18,600 permanent visa holders exited the country. If those numbers were repeated under One Nation’s policy, Australia would have lost more migrants than it took in.

In the last term of parliament, One Nation was explicit about this outcome.

“One Nation will extend its zero-net migration policy and focus on permitting only highly skilled migrants from culturally cohesive countries into Australia,” the section of its website about immigration policy said in 2024, according to online archives.

The minor party has since dropped that language from its website. Asked to confirm whether its current policy intended to lead to zero or negative migration, a party spokesperson did not respond.

But on the numbers, the impact is clear. “You would probably get to a quite large negative NOM,” Rizvi said. “Then ask: what does that do to various industries?”

“Essentially, that’s the end of the international education industry. It’s a huge hit to the tourism industry, which is so reliant on working holidaymakers. It’s a huge hit to the agriculture industry. She’s smashed three big industries immediately. And the fourth big problem you’re going to have is health and aged care – they are so heavily dependent on new migrants that work in that sector.”

Economist Saul Eslake names two significant economic impacts. The first is on the federal budget. “Work by Treasury and the Productivity Commission says that over the course of their lives, migrants are net contributors to the budget,” Eslake said.

“That’s because we don’t pay for their education, and they tend to have a higher employment participation rate. In Australia, they have higher average earnings than the native-born population – so they pay more taxes, and are less likely to get unemployment benefits.”

According to analysis published by the Parliamentary Budget Office last week, even cutting net migration by 40,000 more people than current levels would cost the federal budget $80 billion over 10 years. The One Nation proposal could cut current levels by 300,000 or more – creating an even bigger black hole.

The second is on labour supply in important industries. ”It’s not just fruit pickers and shearers and grain sowers, but health professionals - disproportionately in rural and regional areas – as well as construction workers, childcare and aged care,” Eslake said.

“There’d be some pretty serious consequences, including in areas that One Nation purports to represent.”

Eslake said there would be less demand for housing, particularly in rental property, given most migrants rent when they first arrive in Australia. At the same time, however, significant cuts to skilled migration would make it even harder for construction.

How would these ‘mass deportations’ work?

When Hanson was asked on Seven’s Spotlight program this week what she thought of mass deportations in Australia, she said: “I love it.”

Deportations are in One Nation’s policy platform: its website says it plans to deport 75,000 visa overstayers, illegal workers and unlawful non-residents. MP Barnaby Joyce expanded this week, arguing that illegal migrants would eventually be found through “all range of things” – including health issues and parking fines.

But Rizvi said Donald Trump’s ICE – Immigration and Customs Enforcement – regime had exposed how complicated and expensive this task was in practice: it has cost the United States tens of billions of dollars, required building new detention centres, and clogged up the legal system. The same could happen here.

There are about 70,000 people who have exhausted all their visa options in Australia after applying for asylum and being rejected. Between 20,000 and 30,000 others were long-time overstayers who had not applied for asylum. Most are now undocumented.

“The bulk of them would be working illegally, predominantly in farms, hotels, restaurants and construction sites. The biggest one is farms,” Rizvi said. The most effective way of finding people would be compliance raids on farms around the country during harvest season – a move that is both resource-intensive and, politically, likely to anger farmers.

Rizvi said Hanson needed to explain how these raids would be funded – given the training and recruitment required – as well as the logistics for new detention centres to accommodate tens of thousands of people.

“Then you need to deal with all those people through the legal system, and the taxpayer ends up paying for both sides. You then need to negotiate with the relevant governments to send the people back, and put them on planes,” he said. “Add up all the costs, and you’re quickly running into the many billions.”

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Natassia Chrysanthos is Federal Political Correspondent. She has previously reported on immigration, health, social issues and the NDIS from Parliament House in Canberra.Connect via X or email.