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One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has again appeared to confuse her party’s immigration policy despite more than a week of scrutiny over her position – suggesting there would be both positive and negative overall migration levels in the same conversation.
Asked to clear up her migration numbers during a panel interview at the News Corp Bush Summit on Thursday, Hanson said One Nation’s policy was for “130,000 net migration in this country. That’s it. It’s not going to move from that.”
Net migration refers to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ calculation of how many long-term migrants arrive in the country each year, minus those who depart. This counts people who remain in Australia for 12 months in a 16-month period, and includes returning Australian citizens.
Net overseas migration last year was 306,000, but Labor has forecast bringing this down to 225,000 in two years.
But Hanson then appeared to confuse net migration with permanent migration. She went on to say the net migration figure of 130,000 referred to people who would be granted permanent residency and move on to citizenship – which is a different category.
The government currently grants 185,000 permanent visas each year, with most going to people already living in Australia. The net overseas migration figure includes these people, as well as Australians, New Zealanders and temporary visa holders such as backpackers and students.
Hanson said additional visas would still be granted. “Visa holders are totally different category. We’re talking about permanent residents that are going to move on to citizenship in the country [with the 130,000]. So your visas are totally different,” she said.
“On top of that, you can have your PALM [Pacific] workers, you can have your visa holders in different ones in the country … Rural and regional Australia would die if they didn’t have the workers coming in, and especially the abattoirs and the farmers. So that’s a different program.”
Asked whether that meant more than 130,000, Hanson said: “Correct”.
This appeared to be the same argument that One Nation MP David Farley made to the ABC’s Insiders program last weekend. Farley was pulled into line after saying there would be net migration of 130,000, with Pacific Australia Labour Mobility and other regional visas issued on top.
He admitted this would be “not too different” in size to the Albanese government’s plans.
Hanson said Farley had been wrong. “David Farley was – he didn’t understand. He got confused about the visa holders,” she said.
The point of difference seems to be that One Nation continues to conflate their language when it comes to net overseas migration and permanent visas despite them being different measures.
Farley and MP Barnaby Joyce have both maintained the party’s policy is net overseas migration of 130,000 people. This means the population grows through migration, because thousands more people are coming to Australia than departing.
Hanson and Senator Malcolm Roberts, however, appear to use net migration and permanent visas interchangeably. Permanent visas are one part of the system that feeds into the net migration intake.
Roberts on Tuesday said he was still interested in “negative migration”, during an interview published on X. Hanson, in Thursday’s interview, also said there could be negative migration under her policy.
“It will bring down the number of people in the country by all means. We might have negative [migration] because more people leave the country than coming in,” she said, directly contradicting the 130,000 net migration policy she had confirmed minutes earlier.
Nationals leader Matt Canavan, who appeared alongside Hanson on the summit panel, later told News24 it was hard to comment on the policy when he could not “make heads or tails” of it.
“One Nation has been a bit all over the shop. Let’s face it; that’s being generous on this issue,” he said.
“It’s a major issue for our country getting migration down … What I’m focused on is our plans, the Liberal and Nationals’ plans under Angus Taylor and I, we will bring down migration rates below what houses we build.”
The 130,000 visa policy is still on One Nation’s website, although Hanson has also deleted a social media post on X this week that referred to it. In the now-removed post, Hanson had suggested the One Nation net migration figure could be minus 100,000, when a 130,000 cap on arrivals was considered against roughly 230,000 annual migrant departures.
The apparent change in One Nation’s migration policy has this week been condemned by sections of the populist party’s online support base, who have claimed to be betrayed by the reversal and urged Hanson to return to a negative migration policy.
Online influencer Andre Mamet, who has associated with neo-Nazis, and Scott Challen, who co-founded the “Australian Lobby Group” with right-wing podcast host Sam Bamford, met with Roberts this week and advocated a more extreme position on immigration.
Farley, whose background is in agribusiness, meanwhile told a podcast with The Conversation last week that he and Hanson had reconciled differences in their position on migration. During the byelection, Farley said there was probably no problem with the migrant intake of 306,000.
“We’ve been able to negotiate in the party. Pauline’s very respectful of what’s required of migration in agriculture,” he said.
“What we’ve arrived at is a position. The net number we agree 100 per cent on.”
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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.
Brittany Busch is a federal politics reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.From our partners
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