Dutton pledges to slash permanent migration to 140,000 a year

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has intensified a political fight over housing and congestion by vowing to slash permanent migration to 140,000 a year and promising deeper cuts to the number of overseas students who enter the country.

Dutton also promised a two-year ban on foreign investors and temporary residents buying existing houses and apartments, adding to the Coalition’s policy to let younger Australians use their superannuation to buy their first homes.

Using his budget reply speech to reveal key policies, the opposition leader tapped into community concerns about knife attacks by pledging to develop uniform knife laws across the country if he won power at the next election.

He also promised to toughen the laws on domestic violence by making it a criminal offence to use phone and internet services to inflict harm, and said he wanted to toughen bail conditions for these offences so there was a presumption against releasing perpetrators on bail.

Dutton’s migration policy sets out much deeper cuts to the intake than the government has unveiled in its recent pledges to cap the number of overseas students, crack down on suspect education providers and bring down temporary arrivals.

But his cut to the number of people approved for permanent settlement does not reduce net overseas migration, the broader measure of temporary workers, students and others who increase the population.

“Australians are being left behind by this weak Labor government with the wrong priorities,” Dutton told parliament in his budget reply speech on Thursday night.

“Our country deserves so much more. Ask yourself: Are you better off today than you were two years ago? Do you feel safer or more secure than you did two years ago?

“Australians can’t afford another three years of Labor. At the next election, it will be time for a change. A better change for you, your family and our country.”

Dutton confirmed the Coalition would support one of the key measures in the budget, an energy rebate worth $300 for every household, but he said the measure was not good enough.

“We will support this relief because we know Australians are hurting. But the government is treating the symptom, not the disease,” he said.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton delivers his budget reply speech on Thursday night.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

But he confirmed his opposition to the “made in Australia” tax credits at the heart of Labor’s budget.

“As a start, we will not spend $13.7 billion on corporate welfare for green hydrogen and critical minerals,” he said.

“These projects should stand up on their own without the need for taxpayers’ money.”

Dutton’s stance is at odds with calls from West Australian Liberal leader Libby Mettam to back the tax credits, but the opposition leader said he wanted to support mining in other ways – such as by speeding up approvals for quick-turnaround projects.

He also said the Coalition would dump the financial burden on companies from Labor’s climate change schemes.

He confirmed his support for nuclear power stations in Australia but offered no detail on how that would be achieved and put no time frame on when he would reveal a policy.

As well as setting the lowest target for permanent migration in almost 20 years, Dutton said he would reduce student numbers to free up homes for Australians and increase fees on those students.

“We believe that by rebalancing the migration program and taking decisive action on the housing crisis, the Coalition would free up more than 100,000 additional homes over the next five years,” he told parliament.

“First, we will implement a two-year ban on foreign investors and temporary residents purchasing existing homes in Australia.

“Second, we will reduce the permanent migration program by 25 per cent – from 185,000 to 140,000 for the first two years in recognition of the urgency of this crisis.

“The program will then increase to 150,000 in year three and 160,000 in year four.

“We will ensure there are enough skilled and temporary skilled visas for those with building and construction skills to support our local tradies to build the homes we need.”

Dutton said he would also return the refugee and humanitarian program planning level to 13,750, arguing the program would “remain one of the most generous in the world on a per capita basis”.

While the 140,000 target goes further than Labor in reducing the permanent program, which is set to fall from 195,000 to 185,000 in a new estimate revealed on Tuesday, it also raises questions about whether the Coalition would turn away skilled workers.

Dutton argued for a cut in the permanent intake to 160,000 when he was home affairs minister in the previous government, resulting in a formal reduction from 190,000 under then-prime minister Scott Morrison in the 2019 federal budget, shortly before that year’s election.

Labor increased the intake to 195,000 during the “jobs summit” in September 2022 after employers warned of labour shortages and union leaders accepted the new level in a broader settlement on workplace relations law.

Official figures show last year’s permanent program included 35,000 workers who were sponsored by employers, 32,100 skilled independent visas, 31,000 visas nominated by states and territories, 34,000 regional visas and 40,000 partner visas.

Cutting the total program without rejecting skilled foreign workers would mean placing greater pressure on other parts of the intake, such as Australians who seek permanent residency for partners born overseas.

A different measure of the intake, net overseas migration, includes visitors who stay for 12 months or more during a 16-month period. This includes overseas students because they increase the population without being permanent arrivals.

A cut to the permanent intake does not result in a cut to overall net overseas migration each year, the key measure of the arrivals in the country. Many of the people who move into the permanent program come from those who are already in Australia on temporary visas.

Education Minister Jason Clare dismissed Dutton’s idea of a ban on overseas home-buyers by pointing out that only 5,000 international buyers had purchased homes over the last two years.

“So if he thinks that that’s the solution, tackling housing, then it was wrong,” Clare said.

The government also said that reducing the permanent migration program would have very little bearing on the number of migrants who were in the country, given the broader net intake.

The opposition prepared for the budget reply by asking Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in question time on Thursday to explain how net overseas migration reached 528,000 in the 2023 financial year when Labor had originally estimated it would be only 235,000.

“How can the Australian people believe any forecast this government makes on net overseas migration?” opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan asked.

Albanese pointed to budget measures, including a cap on overseas students, as signs that Labor was fixing the system and bringing down the intake.

“We’re on track to halve it next year,” he said, adding that Labor had inherited a “broken” system from the Coalition.

The net migration intake was 184,000 in the year to June 2022 and spiked to 528,000 the following year after pandemic restrictions were eased.

The budget forecasts a fall in the intake from 395,000 this financial year to 260,000 next year and 255,000 in the subsequent year, followed by two years when the intake would be 235,000.

The Coalition cites the five biggest years, starting last year and ending in June 2027, to warn that migration would add 1.7 million people over five years – bigger than the population of Adelaide.

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