Shadow treasurer changes script on Dutton’s immigration cuts

Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor says the Coalition will cut net overseas migration by 25 per cent if it wins the next election, but his target diverges from the one announced by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and muddies the Coalition’s stance on immigration.

“In just two years, Labor has brought in 923,000 migrants but on the available data, there are only 265,000 new homes,” Taylor said in an address at the National Press Club on Wednesday.

Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“The Coalition proposes to relieve those supply side pressures [and] reduced demand by first temporarily banning foreign investors and temporary residence residents from buying existing homes, cutting permanent migration by 25 per cent for two years, followed by a gradual balancing.”

Taylor’s comments come less than a week after Dutton said he would cut net overseas migration to 160,000 people a year from its current Treasury projection of 260,000 for the coming financial year.

Asked repeatedly to explain the difference between Dutton’s comments and his own, Taylor said they had been explained, and the 25 per cent reduction was over a term of government.

“We’ve said over the coming years, we’ll have a 25 per cent reduction in the NOM [net overseas migration] versus what Labor has,” he said.

“It’s not different. Don’t confuse permanent migration with NOM.”

In his budget reply speech last Thursday, Dutton pledged to reduce permanent migration by 25 per cent from 185,000 to 140,000 for the first two years, followed by a target of 150,000 then 160,000 over the next two years.

But in an interview on 2GB last Friday, the opposition leader also pledged to cut net overseas migration – the total number after allowing for departures and arrivals across all residency visas – to 160,000, which would be a 40 per cent reduction on the government target.

Taylor on Wednesday said the Coalition wanted to ease housing supply issues, and would focus on getting in skilled migrants to support the construction sector while also introducing a tiered student visa system to reduce pressure on the rental market.

The shadow treasurer painted a gloomy picture of the economy, saying Australia was in a “per capita recession” and productivity had collapsed. While wages were rising, he pointed out that when inflation was considered, people’s wages were going backwards.

“Labor’s only answer has been for a big spending big government and big Australia approach,” Taylor said.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers labelled Taylor’s comments “shambolic”.

“Most fundamentally, he couldn’t explain the migration numbers which were at the very core of Peter Dutton’s budget reply,” Chalmers said on Wednesday afternoon.

Taylor’s comments on migration diverge from Peter Dutton’s position last week.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Taylor’s speech came as peak business bodies used a hearing into the Fair Work Commission’s annual wage review to argue against substantial minimum wage increases and instead focus on returning inflation to the target range of 2 to 3 per cent.

Inflation is currently at 3.6 per cent, and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s principal economist, Peter Grist, said the chamber proposed a 2 per cent increase to the minimum wage. This, he conceded, was a “modest decline” and a real wage cut.

“We’re concerned that a substantial increase would put further pressure on inflation and our focus is the objective must be to get that inflation to target range,” Grist told the commission’s expert panel.

The Australian Industry Group’s head of national workplace relations policy, Brent Ferguson, echoed Grist’s position, and said Australia faced challenging economic circumstances to review wages. He argued a 2.8 per cent increase to the minimum wage was a “reasonable balance”.

Government representatives did not put a number on the minimum wage increase but recommended that the real wages of workers should not go backwards.

“Many low paid workers and their families are particularly affected by the cost-of-living crisis,” Department of Employment and Workplace Relations chief economist Matthew Cowgill said.

The ACTU and the United Workers Union argued urged for a wage increase of 5 per cent and argued low-income earning Australians were suffering the most.

“While the panel’s decision [last year] looks sure to provide some prospective wage growth … the previous two decisions didn’t achieve that and the burden of that legacy in continuing price pressures has real life effects,” ACTU director of legal and industrial Trevor Clarke said.

Former treasurer Peter Costello addresses a Financial Services Council breakfast on Wednesday.Credit: Eamon Gallagher

Meanwhile, former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello – the chairman of Nine Entertainment, which owns this masthead – told a Financial Services Council breakfast in Melbourne on Wednesday that Chalmers’ latest budget was inflationary and squandered a chance to pay down debt.

“On any measure, this is a budget which is stimulatory and therefore will add, rather than detract, to inflation,” Costello said.

Spending decisions in the budget will cost $24.4 billion in total over five years across all measures, which will weaken the budget bottom line when the government expects this year’s $9.3 billion surplus to be followed by deficits amounting to $112.8 billion over the subsequent four years.

“We ought to be out retiring debts. That was certainly the policy we had when I was in government – in good times we run surpluses and pay off debt because we know in bad times we’ll run deficits and run up debt,” said Costello, who was treasurer in the Howard government between 1996 and 2007.

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