Pauline Hanson likes nuclear power. Beyond that, it is often easier to compile a list of what she opposes than to identify the Australia she wants to build.
She does not want burqas in public places. She wants immigration cut sharply. She does not want the skilled migration system admitting people who end up driving Ubers, walking dogs or working in nail salons. She opposes net zero, objects to international students bringing family members and regularly warns that migrants are overwhelming housing, hospitals, roads and schools. One Nation is campaigning for permanent migration to be cut to about 130,000 a year, well below the government’s planned program of 185,000.
Hanson is very good at saying no.
That is not necessarily a political weakness. Voters often recognise their frustrations in her complaints before they hear them acknowledged by the major parties. Australia did experience an extraordinary migration surge after the pandemic. Housing construction did not keep pace. Rents rose, vacancy rates tightened and public confidence in the government’s ability to manage population growth weakened.
Net overseas migration reached 547,300 in the year to December 2023. That was far above normal levels and it added demand to an economy already struggling to build enough homes. Anyone pretending those numbers placed no strain on housing, transport or services is refusing to confront the evidence.
Hanson deserves some credit for keeping that strain in the political conversation.
But identifying pressure is easier than governing through it. At some point, the question must move from what Pauline dislikes to what Pauline would actually do, what it would cost and who would carry the burden.
Migration has already fallen sharply. Net overseas migration declined to 306,000 in 2024-25 and to about 301,000 over the year to December 2025, more than 45 per cent below the post-COVID peak. It remains high by historical standards, but the idea that it is still accelerating without restraint is wrong.
The post-pandemic spike also did not emerge from nowhere. Australia effectively closed its borders during COVID-19. Students, skilled workers, backpackers and returning residents were delayed or kept out. Businesses that depended on mobile labour struggled to recruit, while universities, hospitality operators and agricultural employers lost workers and revenue.
When borders reopened, delayed arrivals came together with new demand. That does not excuse the government’s repeated failure to forecast the scale of the rebound. It does explain why comparing 2023 with an ordinary year, without mentioning the border closure that preceded it, gives an incomplete picture.
Now Labor is reportedly considering measures intended to reduce net migration by as many as another 75,000 people over two years. Hanson says the major parties are finally following her lead. She has also declared that she does not care if lower migration hurts universities or businesses.
That may be satisfying politics. It is not serious economic policy.
A government cannot simply say it does not care about the effects on employers. Australian businesses employ Australians. Universities support jobs, research and export income. Construction companies build the homes Hanson says the country lacks. Hospitals, aged-care providers, engineering firms and regional employers cannot fill every vacancy by waving a flag and demanding that local workers appear.
Jobs and Skills Australia found 293 occupations remained in shortage in 2025, including roles across health, science, technical work, trades, machinery operation and driving. Its analysis found that shortages continued to be driven largely by a lack of qualified applicants, particularly in health, teaching and construction-related occupations.
This is where Hanson’s argument needs more meat on the bones.
Which migrants would she cut? Doctors or delivery drivers? Nurses or nail technicians? Engineers or international graduates? Construction workers or the family members of citizens? If the answer is that only the “right” migrants should enter, how will that be determined more effectively than under the current skills system? How quickly can Australians be trained to fill the gaps? Who pays for that training, and what happens during the years it takes?
Australia should absolutely remove occupations from skilled visa pathways when there is no genuine shortage. A skilled program that admits workers for jobs the country can readily fill locally loses public trust. Visa integrity matters.
But a slogan about Uber drivers is not a workforce plan.
There is also an uncomfortable contradiction in using migration as the principal explanation for the housing crisis while proposing cuts that could worsen construction shortages. The construction workforce is already heavily reliant on overseas-born workers, and Jobs and Skills Australia has warned that shortages of qualified tradespeople are constraining construction and clean-energy projects.
Hanson may have won the argument that migration became too high after COVID. Labor and the Coalition are both responding to that pressure. If they follow her further, One Nation may find much of its migration territory occupied by the major parties
Reducing population growth can ease demand for homes. Reducing the number of workers available to build them can restrict supply. Both can be true at once.
That is the policy difficulty Hanson rarely lingers over.
Lower migration would also slow the growth of the workforce, consumer demand and total economic output. That does not mean migration should remain high simply to make gross domestic product look stronger. Australians are entitled to care more about living standards per person than the size of the overall economy.
But governments must still account for the budget, the tax base and an ageing population. Australia’s fertility rate was just 1.481 births per woman in 2024, well below the level needed to replace the population without migration. A smaller intake means slower workforce growth unless productivity rises, retirement is delayed or labour-force participation increases.
The United States offers a warning about the distance between migration rhetoric and economic reality.
Donald Trump returned to office promising tougher enforcement and a major reduction in immigration. Immigration did fall, but the effects have not been cost-free. The US Congressional Budget Office has reduced its estimates of labour-force growth and potential economic output because of lower immigration. It also projects that administrative actions restricting immigration will reduce total wages and salaries by about US$1.2 trillion over the decade to 2035.
Foreign-born workers are disproportionately employed in American service jobs, construction, maintenance, production and transport. Agriculture, construction and hospitality have all warned about the difficulty of removing workers before domestic replacements are available.
Trump has found that borders can be tightened by executive action, but labour markets do not reorganise themselves on command. Crops still need picking. Homes still need building. Hotels still need staff. Older people still need carers.
Australia would face its own version of that problem.
Hanson’s strongest political skill is turning legitimate unease into a simple list of offenders: migrants, students, universities, bureaucrats, global institutions, renewables, multiculturalism and the major parties that supposedly enabled them.
Her positive program is much thinner. Nuclear power is one clear preference. National sovereignty, lower immigration and a stronger emphasis on Australian cultural norms are others. But together they do not yet constitute a detailed economic program capable of answering the consequences of the cuts she demands.
There is a difference between cultural confidence and monoculture. Australia can insist on common laws, English proficiency, civic responsibility and respect for democratic institutions without demanding that citizens look, worship or live the same way.
The country needs a migration system Australians trust. It needs lower numbers when housing and infrastructure cannot cope. It needs stronger enforcement against visa misuse. It needs skilled migration tied to real shortages, faster training of local workers and much better population planning.
Those are practical goals.
But Australia cannot build policy around an endless catalogue of dislikes.
Hanson may have won the argument that migration became too high after COVID. Labor and the Coalition are both responding to that pressure. If they follow her further, One Nation may find much of its migration territory occupied by the major parties.
At that point, Hanson will need to offer something harder than complaint.
She will need to explain what happens after the numbers fall, the workers disappear, the universities contract and the applause dies down.
Saying no is easy. Governing begins with what comes next.
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