Calls to reduce immigration by “raising standards” sound tough, but current visa settings are already far tighter than in 2022 and further cuts would come with economic costs.

The new Liberal leader Angus Taylor has declared the development of a new immigration policy will be a priority.

While I wouldn’t hold my breath on the timing of that, it’s worth considering what he has said to date and what that might mean in practice.

Taylor says he will place greater emphasis on ‘Australian Values’ and on reducing immigration levels by raising standards.

On Sky News, Taylor t alked up his tough approach to a ‘values’ based immigration policy without explaining how he would do that. Unless he copies Donald Trump by blocking immigration from certain countries, as his predecessor was considering and One Nation is proposing, he will find testing people’s values is a lot harder than he may think. Or perhaps he knows that and thinks that rhetoric will be enough to win back One Nation supporters. After all, the media rarely asks Hanson how she would implement her policies!

Taylor and David Littleproud have also stressed reducing immigration by raising standards but without specifying what that means. To provide some context, it is worth considering the policy settings that were in place at the time of the May 2022 Election and comparing those with current policy settings. The May 2022 settings would be those he and Littleproud supported as senior members of the Morrison Cabinet.

Prior to the May 2022 Election, the Coalition Government had slammed on the immigration accelerator as business lobby groups had become hysterical about labour shortages. The new Labor Government responded by increasing the migration program from 160,000 to 195,000. That contributed only around 12,000 to the net migration boom as around 65 per cent of the program is from people in Australia and already counted in net migration.

In September 2022 former Opposition Leader Peter Dutton agreed immigration had to be increased but doubted Labor could deliver quickly enough. By mid-2023, Dutton was complaining the government had lost control of immigration as net migration blew out in 2022-23 to over 530,000 (mainly due to Coalition government policy settings driving up student and working holiday-maker applications).

Labor was slow to deal........

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