Pauline Hanson has called for Australia to stop ordinary migration from countries subject to the government’s highest travel warning, extending One Nation’s migration campaign to refugee and humanitarian visas and drawing a sharp rejection from Labor over the weekend.
The One Nation leader said on Saturday that migration should be paused from countries rated “do not travel” by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade because of risks including terrorism, kidnapping, armed conflict, violent crime, civil unrest, state repression and the collapse of government institutions.
“We can no longer ignore the real security risks presented to Australians from regions hostile to our interests and way of life,” Hanson said.
She argued that Australia’s current terrorism threat level strengthened the case for tougher restrictions, saying: “Australia’s terrorism threat level remains ‘probable’, meaning ASIO assesses there is a greater than 50 per cent chance of an onshore attack or planned attack within the next 12 months.”
That description of the national terrorism threat level is correct. Australia remains at “probable”, which the government defines as a greater than 50 per cent chance of an onshore attack or attack planning during the next 12 months. But the government’s public assessment also points to threats involving domestic actors driven by political and social grievances, conspiracy theories and anti-authority ideologies, rather than attributing the heightened risk simply to migration.
Hanson said Canberra was applying inconsistent standards by warning Australians against travelling to dangerous countries while continuing to consider visa applications from their citizens.
“If the government warns Australians not to go to a country because of extreme security and terrorism risks, the government should not continue accepting ordinary migration from that country on a business-as-usual basis,” she said.
Her proposal would pause ordinary migration where an entire country carries the Level 4 warning and impose greater scrutiny on applications from countries where substantial areas are rated “do not travel”.
Hanson specifically named Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The current Smartraveller list is considerably longer. Twenty-six destinations carry an overall Level 4 warning, including Afghanistan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Chad, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Niger, North Korea, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen.
That creates an important distinction in the argument.
DFAT’s travel warnings are designed to measure the danger to Australians travelling to another country. Smartraveller says explicitly that its four advice levels show “the risk for Australians travelling there”. A Level 4 rating can be imposed because of war, arbitrary detention, civil unrest, kidnapping, terrorism, health risks or the inability of Australian authorities to provide consular assistance.
It is not an assessment that every citizen of that country represents a security risk to Australia.
That distinction was central to the government’s response.
Minister Chris Bowen rejected Hanson’s proposal on Saturday and compared the approach with Donald Trump’s immigration policies in the United States. He pointed to migrants from Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan who had fled extremist groups and conflict before rebuilding their lives in Australia, arguing that people escaping dangerous regimes should not themselves be treated as dangerous because of their nationality
Minister Chris Bowen rejected Hanson’s proposal on Saturday and compared the approach with Donald Trump’s immigration policies in the United States. He pointed to migrants from Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan who had fled extremist groups and conflict before rebuilding their lives in Australia, arguing that people escaping dangerous regimes should not themselves be treated as dangerous because of their nationality.
Hanson’s proposal goes further than restrictions on skilled, student or family migration. She wants the approach applied to new offshore refugee and humanitarian applications as well.
“These changes should apply to every new offshore visa from the listed ‘do not travel’ countries, including refugee and humanitarian visas. There should be no refugee loophole,” she said.
“Any future refugee or humanitarian visa from a ‘do not travel’ country should be considered only if the Government and relevant security agencies can give Australians an absolute assurance that the person’s identity has been established and that they present no security risk to Australians.”
Australia already requires protection and humanitarian visa applicants to satisfy identity, character and security requirements. Home Affairs says information about an applicant’s identity is used to assess protection claims and complete character and security checks, while applicants can be refused if they fail to provide genuine identity documents without a reasonable explanation.
The practical question raised by Hanson’s demand for an “absolute assurance” is whether such a standard could ever be met. Security assessments are based on available intelligence, documentation and risk, rather than an ability to guarantee that any individual will never pose a threat.
It would also bear most heavily on refugees from countries where reliable documentation and functioning government agencies are often hardest to find precisely because of the conflict or institutional collapse that produced the Level 4 travel warning.
Hanson dismissed that concern, saying security should override other considerations.
“I’m not interested in importing the world’s problems at the expense of Australia’s security,” she said.
“The government cannot issue its highest security warning for an entire country about terrorism, kidnapping, arbitrary detention, armed conflict and collapsed authority, then pretend those same conditions are irrelevant to migration.”
The proposal is the latest move in One Nation’s increasingly aggressive campaign on migration.
Hanson has already called for the permanent migration program to be cut to 130,000 places a year and said she was unconcerned if lower skilled migration hurt some businesses. One Nation has also targeted international student numbers and backed stronger powers to prevent Australians associated with overseas terrorist organisations from returning to the country.
The Coalition is also moving towards lower migration, with Opposition Leader Angus Taylor proposing that net overseas migration be kept below the number of new homes Australia can build. Coalition modelling released over the weekend suggested that could mean a figure below 173,000, compared with net overseas migration of about 300,000 currently.
Labor is preparing its own migration changes as it tries to bring net overseas migration towards 225,000 by 2027-28, including stronger action against visa overstayers and changes designed to increase departures.
The political argument is becoming increasingly difficult to separate from a parallel debate about multiculturalism and social cohesion.
Hanson’s latest demand came only days after school and university students protested against One Nation across several Australian cities and Foreign Minister Penny Wong rejected Hanson’s earlier call for Australia to become a “monocultural society”. Wong argued that turning Australians against one another would weaken rather than strengthen the country.
Hanson, however, is showing no indication that she intends to soften her migration campaign.
“The security of Australians must be the number one consideration of government,” she said. “Stopping migration from ‘do not travel’ countries and applying greater security checks to countries with warnings will help keep Australians safe.”
The argument will now turn on a more difficult question: whether the conditions that make a country dangerous for an Australian visitor provide a sound basis for judging the people trying to escape it.
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