From The Summary Podcast - Australia's Migration Debate: Policy, Risks, and Reputation

I think that if, uh, we look at the key takeaways, there's one central theme, and that is that they all wanna cut the migration rate.

They think it's a bit too high.

When you look at One Nation, it was first off the blocks a few weeks ago.

It's talking about a massive cut to the migration rate to the point that One Nation thinks that its policy could actually lead to a recession because, uh, it is, it, it wants to go for a hard reset of no more than about 130,000, uh, people.

That's what they think is sustainable.

Labor was next.

It's, uh, talking about a, uh, migration rate or net migration rate of 225,000.

And now we've got the Coalition.

They've released their policy.

They're talking about a net migration rate of about 100,000 in, uh, their first two years of government, and then it would gradually increase to about 160,000 as more housing becomes available.

So the Coalition, it was last off the blocks, but it's hoping to hit that middle ground.

And so everyone says it's gotta come down.

It's a question of, uh, not only as you said, h- by how much, but also how you get there, the, the types of visas and those sorts of things?

Yeah, look, uh, essentially there are a couple of variations between the three parties, but not many.

What all of them are looking at is slashing the number of people who come across on various visa classes, and the one that they're targeting is student visas.

That seems to be in their sights, whether you're Labor, One Nation, or the Coalition.

Student visas really do seem to be the visa class that's coming under most scrutiny, and that also feeds into not only just student visas, but graduate visas, and then that has family reunion visas, and bridging visas is a big one.

That's people that might be on one certain form of visa that's about to expire.

They try and get themselves onto another form of visa so that they can stay in Australia for a bit longer.

That's the, the crux of it here.

They all are just tinkering at the edges with these various visa classes, but student visas seems to be where most of the focus seems to be.

And you mentioned that Angus Taylor Co- Coalition was the last to reveal.

Do you think that they were doing that deliberately to see what Labor and One Nation put on the table, gauge the reaction from business groups and those-

Mm

... sorts of things, and try and land in-