Labor has accused the Coalition of importing Trump-style culture wars to damage Australia’s international migration program, defending tight controls on overseas arrivals and blaming conservative MPs including Andrew Hastie for “dog whistling”.
Labor’s assistant minister for citizenship and multicultural affairs, Julian Hill, will tell a major conference in Melbourne on Friday that opposition attacks on net overseas migration ignore the fact many skilled workers stayed in Australia after the Covid-19 pandemic due to the strong labour market, and will challenge the Coalition to explain where it would make further cuts to the migration program.
“Australia is not Europe. Australia is not the USA,” Hill will say.
“Our migration program is orderly and our borders are tightly controlled.”
Hastie, the former shadow home affairs minister, quit the Coalition frontbench last week after being told by the opposition leader, Sussan Ley, that he would not be responsible for formulating immigration policy ahead of the next election.
The opposition has accused Labor of mismanaging immigration, adding to the housing crisis and infrastructure pressures in capital cities. Hastie and other conservative Liberal MPs are campaigning against “mass migration”, a term the Coalition’s immigration spokesperson, Paul Scarr, rejects.
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Hill will use his speech to a Migration Institute of Australia event to hit out at misinformation and unfounded claims about the number of new arrivals, stating “Australia does not have or suffer from mass migration”.
He will point out Labor has left the permanent migration intake for this financial year unchanged, at 185,000 people, and that net overseas migration is down by 40% from its post-pandemic peak.
Net overseas migration (NOM) is the difference between the number of people arriving and staying in Australia for longer than 12 months and the number of long-term and permanent departures.
“The rise in NOM was a bit higher than anticipated – not as the Liberals and extremists pretend because of out-of-control visa grants, but because fewer people departed than expected due to Australia’s very strong labour market,” Hill will say.
Factchecking protesters’ claims of ‘mass migration’ into Australia – video
“These temporary visa holders are now departing in larger numbers, contributing to a rapid fall in NOM.”
He will accuse the Liberal party of tearing itself apart “in a race to the bottom on race and immigration”, calling such rhetoric “profoundly against our national interest”.
Name-checking Hastie and Liberal Northern Territory senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Hill accuses them in the speech of taking the coward’s route in the debate.
“The problem is that the Liberal party of today is not the Liberal party of old. It’s not just a few extremists or populists – Hastie, Price and their cabal – blowing the dog whistle now; the Liberals are all taking the coward’s route.”
“Pauline Hanson now lives rent free inside their heads. This is today’s Liberal party, it’s who they are now.”
He will challenge Ley and to explain where a Coalition government would cut arrivals, and what impact such a change would have on the national economy.
Hastie suggested earlier this month the rate of net overseas migration was making Australians “feel like strangers in our own home”. The comments echo claims from the US president, Donald Trump, and conservative figures in the UK, where governments have struggled to control illegal migration.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that net overseas migration was close to 316,000 in the year to March, down from about 335,000 people in the year to December.
The total was more than 493,000 a year ago, down from a peak of almost 556,000 in September 2023.
Treasury estimates assume net migration will slow to 335,100 in the year to June, before trending lower to about 262,000 in this financial year and steadying at about 230,000 annually for the rest of the decade.