One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce has refused to guarantee that his party will lower Australia’s permanent migration intake.
Mr Joyce was asked on Sunday whether One Nation would reduce permanent migration from the current cap of 185,000, which includes 132,200 Skilled visas, and 52,500 Family visas,
But the former deputy prime minister would not commit to bringing it down, and referred to One Nation’s new immigration policy of net overseas migration of 130,000, which shifted last week from leader Pauline Hanson’s previous promise to cap visas at 130,000 – a difference of up to 230,000 per year.
“It’s dependent on other factors that make up the NOM (net overseas migration),” Mr Joyce told News24.com.au.
“We have a policy on the net overseas migration. Now, I would suggest very, very strongly that it would be. But I’m not going to go into the peculiarities of what two numbers make up net.
“But to get a NOM of 130,000, it’s going to be very hard to do that unless we’re substantially below the permanent migration numbers of Labor.”
Ms Hanson previously promised to deliver net negative overseas migration, and the One Nation website still states “capping visas at 130,000 per year” as its immigration policy, but last week MP for Farrer David Farley stated the 130,000 referred to net overseas migration, and was backed up by Ms Hanson.
Mr Farley also said there could be another 100,000 temporary visa holders on top of that, and admitted that would make One Nation’s immigration target “not too different” from Labor’s.
Then at a summit during the week Ms Hanson seemed to confuse net overseas migration – the number of immigrant arrivals minus the number of departures – with the permanent migration program, and said the 130,000 number did not include Pacific Islander farm workers or temporary visa holders.
Labor has promised to bring net overseas migration down to 225,000 by 2028, although it has failed to meet a single migration target since forming government in May 2022.
Earlier this year Mr Joyce claimed that One Nation was not an anti-immigration party, and said Australia needed immigrants to build more homes, and Mr Farley said in May that he thought the current overseas migration of 306,000 was “not too high”.
Header image: Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce (One Nation).
