Liberal Party migration scare campaign built on the wrong data

Claims of “exploding” migration collapse under scrutiny, as the misuse of ABS PLT data fuels a misleading political narrative about Labor’s policies, writes Dr Abul Rizvi.

IN THIS RECENT media release titled ‘Migration numbers explode under Labor as standards slip’, the Liberal Party again argues migration levels are rising because standards are slipping. But is any of that true?

The Liberal Party says:

ABS data published today reveals 1,154,000 permanent and long-term arrivals to Australia over the year to February 2026.

In 2026, we are seeing the highest levels of annual arrivals on record in fifty years.

Permanent and long-term departures over the same period were just 675,000, resulting in net permanent and long-term arrivals of 479,000.

Under this Labor Government, net permanent and long-term arrivals have risen and been consistently between 400,000-500,000 per annum — and only showing signs of stabilising at this elevated level.

Several others have pointed to the same numbers.

Angus Taylor pushes English requirement for permanent visa holders

Angus Taylor’s proposal to mandate English for permanent visa holders raises serious questions about fairness, practicality and its underlying political intent.

For example, One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson was reportedly:

‘...“shocked” at record-breaking migration figures after Anthony Albanese promised a drastic cut.’

The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) has made the same argument. Sydney Radio shock jock Ben Fordham takes it further and says we are receiving 3,400 migrants per day based on Permanent and Long-Term (PLT) Arrivals in February. That comes to 1.24 million migrant arrivals over 12 months.

The first step to understanding these claims is to note that, in addition to writing to several think tanks and media outlets warning about misusing PLT data, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) also has a permanent warning on its website that states:

‘Overseas arrivals and departures (OAD) data, including permanent and long-term movements, should not be used as a measure of overseas migration. This data does not reflect the official ABS definition of migration and may lead to inaccurate interpretations. For instance, OAD permanent and long-term arrivals may be increasing while actual overseas migrant arrivals are decreasing for the same period.’

It is not that the Liberal Party, One Nation, the IPA and Ben Fordham do not know of the ABS warning. Some of them attacked the ABS for putting out the warning (for example, anti-immigration website Macrobusiness) and argued the ABS was trying to censor them. Even after it was shown that the ABS was right to put out the warning, the misuse of PLT movements data has continued.

I published this article in September last year, calling on these organisations to apologise to the ABS when net migration data for the March quarter of 2025 was published, showing net migration well below net PLT for that quarter. Of course, no apology was forthcoming, but the misuse continues and seems to be growing.

The key problem is the conflation of PLT data with net migration data. The two can be very different. As a general rule, PLT in the March quarter in particular tends to be very significantly higher than net migration in this quarter, while it tends to be lower than net migration in the December quarter. That’s because in the December quarter, we see a large number of long-term and permanent migrants (particularly students) leave Australia at the end of the academic year and then return at the start of the year.

But because these people will usually have already been counted in net migration when they first arrived, they are not counted in net migration when they leave in the December quarter (hence PLT in the December quarter is lower) or when they return in the March quarter (hence PLT in the March quarter is higher). See Chart 1.

The use of PLT in the month of February is particularly misleading. Fordham’s 3,400 migrant arrivals per day in February are just wrong. Fordham may or may not know he is misleading his listeners. But he probably doesn’t care. The Liberal Party and One Nation may also not care. The political opportunity of misleading Australians on migration may be just too great.

Net migration fell from its peak in 2022-23 of around 540,000 to around 305,000 in 2024-25. That was largely due to a tightening of standards since the change of government in May 2022. It was very low standards in May 2022 that led to the net migration boom in 2022-23, something that Opposition Leader Angus Taylor refuses to acknowledge.

In the September quarter of 2025, net migration stopped falling when it was 87,821 compared with 81,642 in the September quarter of 2024. Net migration in the December quarter of 2025 will likely be higher than the 63,894 in the December quarter of 2024.

Behind Angus Taylor’s immigration plan is a Trump‑like economic agenda

Angus Taylor's immigration plan is inextricably linked to a Trumpian economic agenda.

But it is also likely that the outcome for the March quarter of 2026 will be lower than the 109,134 for the March quarter of 2025. That is due to significant further tightening of policy in relation to students (increased refusal rates), temporary graduates (doubling the application fee) and the training visa (increased scrutiny of the nominated position).

If that tightening is sustained, net migration in 2025-26 will be lower than in 2024-25, not higher and exploding as the Liberal Party has asserted in its press release. However, it will be higher than the 260,000 forecast by the Treasury.

Without further tightening, net migration will not fall to the 225,000 forecast by Treasury for 2026-27. We will know more about that in the forthcoming Budget.

So the truth of the matter is:

net migration boomed in 2022-23 largely due to policy settings put in place by the Coalition Government before May 2022;
Labor was too slow to tighten policy and hence, net migration has remained higher for longer;
net migration in 2025-26 is not “exploding” and will be nowhere near the 400,000 to 500,000 the Liberal Party and One Nation have tried to suggest;
visa standards have not “slipped” and today are significantly higher than in May 2022; and
these will need to be raised further if the net migration forecast of 225,000 in 2026-27 is to be delivered.

Dr Abul Rizvi is an Independent Australia columnist and a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul.