One Nation’s migration maths doesn’t add up

One Nation’s plan to slash temporary migration by 750,000 promises dramatic cuts, but its numbers, assumptions and economic consequences don’t add up. Dr Abul Rizvi reports.

ONE NATION wants to reduce Australia's 3 million temporary entrants by 750,000 over three years.

They are right to argue that reducing the number of temporary entrants in Australia is necessary for several reasons, including that it puts unsustainable pressure on the permanent migration program. But is One Nation’s approach the best way to do that?

One Nation proposes that its 750,000 reduction in the stock of temporary entrants will result in net overseas migration (NOM) over three years being negative. Modern Australia has never had negative NOM, or indeed a sharp reduction in NOM, without that being driven by a very high unemployment rate and a declining participation rate (that was the case even during COVID when unemployment spiked sharply).

That was also the case with the reduction of NOM into negative territory in Canada in 2025.

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A key difficulty with analysing One Nation’s policy is that in nine pages of detail, it does not once mention the size and composition of the permanent migration program. This means we don’t know what has been assumed for temporary entrants acquiring permanent residence (if anything), noting that current Labor government policy is for 70 per cent of the permanent program of 185,000 to be from temporary entrants already in Australia (around 388,000 over three years).

It is also not possible to calculate NOM without knowing what has been assumed for permanent migration. On the recent National Forum program on the ABC, MP Barnaby Joyce struggled to understand this.

One Nation says it will achieve its objective of reducing the stock of temporary entrants in Australia by 750,000 over three years by:

Reducing the number of student visas granted each year from 337,527 granted in 2025-26 (offshore and onshore) to 115,000 per annum (offshore only with new onshore student visa applications abolished and including 15,000 PhD and other research students some of whom may be allowed to bring family). The aim is for an ongoing stock of 350,000 students, down from the end of July 2026 stock of 589,923 (not including student visa applicants in the onshore backlog).
Confining temporary graduate visas to students who have studied in areas of high demand, using an annual visa cap of 20,000 per annum compared with 144,063 temporary graduate visas granted in 2025-26.
Reducing temporary skilled visas to an annual “demand-driven” level of 70,000 per annum, down from 140,824 in 2025-26. The aim is to reduce the stock from 263,489 to 160,000. The main method of reducing the visa grants appears to be by preventing grants to skilled temporary entrants who wish to bring their spouse/dependent children.
Reducing the number of bridging visa holders from 412,533 at the end of July 2026 to 300,000. This is to be achieved by limiting opportunities for onshore change of status by students in particular.
Removing 80,000 unlawful non-citizens down to zero.

Student visas

An immediate challenge for the One Nation student visa policy is how the existing backlog of onshore student visa applications at both the primary and appeal stages (around 100,000 or more) would be dealt with, noting these have acquired legal rights. The Labor Government has been struggling with this for some time.

Increasing the number of post-graduate research visas to 15,000 as proposed by One Nation is an extraordinarily tall order. Offshore post-graduate visas granted in 2025-26 were 5,652 plus 3,104 dependents. We have never reached anywhere near 15,000 post-graduate student visas in our history.

Why One Nation thinks more post-graduates would be attracted to a situation where universities are massively cutting research staff due to a loss of income from overseas students and with highly uncertain pathways to permanent residence is a mystery.

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Offshore primary student visa grants have been falling since the boom of 2022-23, from 325,723 to 239,791 in 2023-24; 210,423 in 2024-25; and 182,172 in 2025-26. But outside COVID, we have not been below 115,000 offshore primary student visa grants since 2011-12, when there were 111,136 granted.

One Nation proposes the use of caps to limit student visa grants to 115,000. Caps are a very poor policy tool and should be used as a last resort. They create massive administrative costs and have appalling unintended consequences.

A better approach would be to introduce a university entrance exam (there are many of these used around the world by top-class universities) with the pass mark determined by the Government. This could be done at little to no cost to taxpayers.

The size of the International Education industry would need to shrink much further than it has to date, noting it still has enrolled many students who arrived in earlier years. That means the revenue from their tuition fees is only just starting to dry up.

The full implications of One Nation policy on the International Education industry and university budgets would take time to manifest. The industry directly employs around 50,000 Australians and many more indirectly. As in Canada, a substantial portion of these people’s jobs would be at risk. As in Canada, governments would be under pressure to bail out many universities, including universities in regional Australia.

The student contribution to NOM under One Nation’s long-term policy may fall from 156,660 NOM arrivals in 2024-25 (about 66 per cent of total offshore student grants in 2024-25) to around 76,000, assuming the same rate of conversion to NOM.

Student NOM departures can be expected to rise initially but may settle at around 50,000 per annum, giving a student contribution to NOM of around 26,000 per annum. Outside COVID, that would be the lowest student contribution to NOM since 2011-12 but may still be too high to fit within One Nation’s long-term NOM target of 130,000.

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Temporary graduates

One Nation’s overall temporary graduate policy of confining these to students who have studied in areas of long-term skills demand is sensible. It helps to reduce the number of former students stuck in immigration limbo. The Government should have adopted that policy years ago but was pressured by the International Education industry not to do so.

The aim is for an ongoing stock of 40,000 temporary graduates, down from the current 144,063. An ongoing stock of 40,000 may well be a sensible target, but why cap the number of temporary graduates if they have completed courses in long-term demand? It would be like saying to a nurse who has just completed a nursing degree at New England University that he/she cannot work at Armidale Hospital until the year after the cap is reached.

The nurse may in the interim be on a bridging visa or may simply leave. A nonsense policy.

Skilled temporary entrants

Apart from preventing skilled temporary visa applicants from bringing their spouse/dependent children with them, it is not clear how One Nation would halve the number of skilled temporary visas granted while still managing these on a demand-driven basis.

One Nation will soon abandon the idea that Australian employers can recruit highly skilled people from overseas while demanding they leave their spouse/dependent child behind. Have a look at these doctors who have been recruited from overseas by Armidale and Inverell hospitals. Would they come to Australia if they were required to leave their immediate family behind? Even One Nation will be able to work out how silly that is.

There will eventually be a natural fall in skilled temporary applications once policy on temporary graduates is tightened. Former Immigration Minister Peter Dutton managed to get skilled temporary visa grants to below 70,000 in 2017-18, but that was largely through slow visa processing — an unsustainable solution.

A better approach to managing demand for skilled temporary visas is to increase the minimum salary from the current $80,000 to over $100,000 (this had been frozen for a decade at $53,000 by the former Coalition Government — a silly thing to do). There may need to be carve-outs for new nurse recruits on a temporary graduate visa and for industries in regional Australia that are heavily reliant on the skilled temporary visa (such as meat processing).

At 70,000 skilled temporary visa grants per annum, with a focus on offshore grants given the proposed change in policy on temporary graduates, the contribution to NOM from these may be around 15,000 per annum. That would be down from 35,700 in 2024-25. This would be heavily dependent on the state of the labour market — a strong labour market would push this number higher.

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Bridging visa holders

One Nation expects the stock of bridging visa holders to fall by around 112,000 to 300,000. Presumably, that is to be achieved by faster processing of the onshore student backlog and eliminating the opportunity to apply for further student visas onshore.

A better approach to achieving the same objective would be to confine onshore student visa applications to students studying in areas of long-term demand (such as carpentry but not management diplomas, as the Government has recently done to a limited degree).

Oddly, One Nation says nothing about the 300,000 people remaining on bridging visas.

Mass deportation

One Nation assumes it will be able to remove 80,000 overstayers over three years. While there is great merit in a stronger immigration compliance function, the One Nation policy, with its various threats, sounds much like U.S. President Trump’s mass deportation plan. That is a plan to spend stupendous amounts of taxpayer money recruiting and training immigration compliance staff; disrupting farms, construction sites, schools, hospitals and aged care homes during compliance raids; building huge detention centres; massively clogging up the courts and paying out huge amounts of taxpayer money for wrongful detentions and deportations.

That is ultimately for a relatively marginal increase in actual deportations.

We can safely assume we will not get anywhere near One Nation’s target of 80,000 deportations, but we will have spent a lot of money.

Overall impact

Whether One Nation can achieve negative NOM over three years will depend very much on the state of the labour market. As in Canada, a much weaker labour market would be required, as well as smashing university budgets with huge numbers of workers in the International Education industry losing their jobs and universities having to be bailed out by taxpayers.

If the labour market remained strong, the demands from employers in many industries to enable easier recruitment from overseas rather than making it harder would be deafening, particularly if their farms and worksites were subject to regular compliance raids.

A better approach would be to more gradually reduce NOM to whatever level One Nation eventually settles on, noting that its decision to quarantine working holidaymakers and the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (P.A.L.M.) will mean bigger cuts in other areas.

At some stage, all three parties will eventually have to deal with the massive partner visa application backlog (around 120,000), noting that current law prevents the Government from legally limiting places for partners (it has been doing so illegally). They will also need to address the very large contribution to NOM from New Zealand citizens (around 38,000 in 2024-25). One Nation’s policy document does not mention this cohort.

From its nine-page policy document, it is not possible to determine how One Nation will get NOM down to 130,000, let alone into negative territory, because it doesn’t mention its target for the permanent migration program — an essential ingredient for determining NOM.

Nevertheless, it has forced the Labor Government and the Coalition to respond.

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