One Nation’s signature promise to slash migration to 130,000 a year has become considerably harder to explain after one of its own MPs conceded the party would allow at least another 100,000 foreign workers into Australia, putting its practical number remarkably close to Labor’s own migration target.
David Farley, the recently elected One Nation member for Farrer, told the ABC’s Insiders on Sunday that the party’s headline figure did not include workers it regarded as essential to agriculture, aged care, engineering and other industries.
“Well, the raw number is not too different, but the reality is, where do we need them?” Farley said.
“We don’t need them in the great urban metroplex. We need them out to be productive, working in agriculture, engineering, mining, etc.”
Farley said One Nation was targeting what he called net overseas migration in its “true form” of 130,000, before adding programs including Pacific workers, aged-care nurses and other skilled migrants.
He acknowledged the additional intake would be at least 100,000, taking the effective figure to about 230,000.
“We don’t need them in the great urban metroplex. We need them out to be productive, working in agriculture, engineering, mining, etc”
That matters because Labor’s federal budget already forecasts net overseas migration falling to 245,000 this financial year and 225,000 in each of the following two years.
There is also no separate official version of net overseas migration matching Farley’s “true NOM” description.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics counts people in net overseas migration when their movements mean they are in, or out of, Australia for at least 12 months within a 16-month period. Temporary workers can therefore count towards NOM just as students, permanent migrants and other visa holders can.
In practical terms, One Nation’s 130,000 migration slogan is beginning to look more like a policy about which migrants Australia accepts and where they live, rather than a dramatic difference in the overall number.
Farley effectively conceded as much, saying “the raw number is not too different” from the government’s.
That is quite a shift for a party that has made migration one of its most potent political weapons.
It is also becoming increasingly clear that Labor has already been cutting migration, regardless of whether voters believe it has moved quickly enough.
Net overseas migration peaked at about 556,000 in the year to September 2023 following the reopening of Australia’s borders. It fell to 306,000 in 2024-25 and was running at about 301,000 in the year to December 2025. The ABS says annual migration has now fallen for seven consecutive quarters from its post-pandemic peak.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke is still working on further changes intended to bring the figure towards the government’s budget forecasts, including tighter management of temporary visas, overstayers and visa pathways.
Net overseas migration peaked at about 556,000 in the year to September 2023 following the reopening of Australia’s borders. It fell to 306,000 in 2024-25 and was running at about 301,000 in the year to December 2025. The ABS says annual migration has now fallen for seven consecutive quarters from its post-pandemic peak
If Labor eventually gets NOM to 225,000, the political distance between its number and the roughly 230,000 Farley has now described becomes almost negligible.
One Nation can still argue that its composition would be different. Farley wants more workers directed into regional Australia and industries facing genuine shortages rather than adding population to Sydney, Melbourne and other large cities.
That is a serious policy argument.
It is also a reminder of why cutting migration is substantially harder than campaigning against it.
Farley knows the problem particularly well because his electorate depends on migrant labour.
Before winning Farrer, he caused considerable discomfort inside One Nation by saying net migration of 306,000 was “probably not” too high if Australia wanted to develop agriculture and water projects.
“If we’re successful in One Nation’s water policies, we’re going to need more labour, and we’re going to need more labour quickly, skilled labour,” he said during the byelection campaign.
There are currently 32,645 workers in the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme alone. The federal government says the program exists because employers in agriculture and regional industries cannot find enough Australian workers.
This is where Australia’s migration debate is entering a more difficult phase.
For the past three years, the political argument has been dominated by what high migration has done to rents, house prices and infrastructure.
The next question may be what happens when the numbers actually fall.
The housing market is already showing signs of strain. Cotality’s final figures for the week ending August 16 put the combined capital-city auction clearance rate at 48.9 per cent, compared with 69.8 per cent a year earlier. Sydney fell to 47.1 per cent and Melbourne to 52.9 per cent, with auction volumes also substantially below last year.
That does not mean Australia faces a property collapse. It does mean the political equation around migration and housing is changing.
For years, rising population helped underpin demand for homes and rentals. A sharp reduction in population growth, combined with high interest rates, weaker employment and changes to property taxation, would remove some of that demand.
There are about 2.3 million individual housing investors in Australia, roughly 10 per cent of the working-age population, according to Reserve Bank research based on tax records. Investment properties account for about one-fifth of the dwelling stock.
One Nation itself has moved to protect that constituency. Hanson has proposed allowing negative gearing on up to two properties per person, opposing Labor’s decision to restrict negative gearing on newly purchased established homes.
There is an obvious tension here.
One Nation wants much lower migration partly to reduce housing demand, while also advocating policies intended to support property investors whose returns depend in part on housing and rental demand.
One Nation wants much lower migration partly to reduce housing demand, while also advocating policies intended to support property investors whose returns depend in part on housing and rental demand
State governments have something at stake as well. Victoria expects about $10 billion from land transfer duty in 2026-27, although the state budget has already downgraded the forecast because of weaker property activity and higher interest rates.
The same dilemma exists in education.
International education generated about $51 billion in export earnings in 2023-24, and international student fees accounted for about 22 per cent of university revenue in 2023, according to the federal Education Department.
Universities Australia says institutions internally funded more than half of their research expenditure in 2023, often using international student revenue to cover costs that government research grants do not meet.
Cut student numbers hard enough and Australia may reduce pressure on rental markets. It may also reduce university revenue, research funding, hospitality spending and employment.
None of this means migration should remain high simply to prop up GDP or house prices.
Australia’s post-COVID migration surge clearly ran ahead of housing and infrastructure. The country needed to bring it down.
But there is a point at which the economic risks begin moving in the other direction.
GDP grew just 0.3 per cent in the March quarter, while GDP per person fell 0.1 per cent. Unemployment rose to 4.5 per cent in July, its highest level of the post-COVID period.
The Reserve Bank now expects economic growth to slow through 2026 and has specifically noted that stronger population growth increases headline GDP, while weaker housing conditions and restrictive financial settings are weighing on the economy.
Australia is not in recession. But if migration is cut much harder while consumer demand, property and employment are already weakening, governments could eventually find themselves confronted by a very different political problem: too little growth rather than too much population.
Australia is not in recession. But if migration is cut much harder while consumer demand, property and employment are already weakening, governments could eventually find themselves confronted by a very different political problem: too little growth rather than too much population
That is when today’s promises become interesting.
The Coalition says migration should be tied to housing construction. One Nation says Australia needs dramatically fewer migrants.
Yet regional employers, farmers, miners, hospitals and aged-care providers are already telling politicians they need overseas labour.
If economic conditions deteriorate, those voices will become louder.
We have seen this movie before. Australia closed its borders during COVID, migration turned negative and labour shortages appeared across industries. When the borders reopened, governments and businesses rushed to rebuild the workforce, contributing to the extraordinary surge that followed.
Political memories can be short.
The Victorian election on November 28 will provide an early test of whether One Nation’s federal migration campaign continues to resonate as strongly once migration is visibly falling and the housing market is no longer racing upwards. Immigration is a federal responsibility, but voter anger about population, housing and cost of living does not remain neatly within jurisdictional boundaries.
One Nation has been extraordinarily successful at forcing Labor and the Coalition onto its preferred political territory.
Its problem now is that the major parties are moving onto that territory too.
If Labor gets migration close to 225,000 and One Nation’s own effective figure turns out to be around 230,000, Hanson may soon discover that the easier part was demanding the cut.
The harder part is explaining what One Nation would actually do differently once the numbers become almost the same.
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