Pauline Hanson Says She Doesn’t Care If Migration Cuts Hurt Australian Businesses. I Do.
- Youssef Haddad
- 5 minutes ago
- 10 min read
28 August 2026 | By Youssef Haddad - Principal Director – Immigration Law Matters Australia
Pauline Hanson’s call for substantial migration cuts has once again placed Australian migration policy at the centre of the national debate. Her argument resonates with Australians who are concerned about housing affordability, infrastructure pressures and the pace of population growth, particularly following the extraordinary increase in Net Overseas Migration after Australia’s international borders reopened. These are legitimate issues, and I do not believe Australians should be criticised simply for asking whether the country’s migration levels are sustainable.
The debate becomes more difficult, however, when reducing migration is presented as though there are no consequences on the other side of the equation. Earlier this month, when discussing proposed reductions to migration and the potential effect on Australian businesses, Senator Hanson said that she did not care if businesses were adversely affected. Her stated concern was Australians struggling to obtain housing and maintain a decent standard of living. That is a powerful political message because it presents the issue as a choice between protecting Australian living standards and protecting businesses that want access to overseas workers.
I do not believe the choice is that simple. After many years working within Australia’s migration system, I have seen how skilled migration interacts with Australian employers, regional communities and industries that genuinely struggle to obtain particular skills locally. I have also seen why Australians are increasingly concerned about the consequences of rapid population growth. We should be capable of acknowledging both realities at the same time: migration cannot be allowed to run ahead of Australia’s housing and infrastructure capacity, but substantially reducing migration without considering which workers Australia is losing, which industries depend upon those skills and what the consequences will be for Australian businesses is not a complete migration policy.
Australia therefore needs an honest conversation about migration, but that conversation must go beyond whether the headline number should simply be higher or lower. The more important questions are how many migrants Australia actually needs, what skills and people should be prioritised, what level of population growth the country can sustainably accommodate, and whether our migration program is producing sufficient economic and social benefit for Australia. Those are considerably harder questions than simply promising to cut migration, but they are the questions a serious Australian migration policy must ultimately answer.
Australian Businesses Are Part of the National Interest
I have spent many years working within Australia's migration system, and one of the realities that can disappear from the political debate is that migration policy does not operate in isolation. Behind the statistics are Australian businesses making decisions about whether to expand, whether to undertake new projects, whether they can fill specialist positions and, in some cases, whether they can continue providing essential services. When migration settings change, those consequences eventually reach employers, workers, consumers and communities.
There are circumstances where an Australian employer has genuinely attempted to recruit locally and simply cannot find a person with the particular skills or experience required. A regional business may struggle to attract qualified workers. An aged-care provider may require appropriately qualified staff. A construction or engineering company may require specialised expertise for a project. A technology business may be competing internationally for highly specialised talent that is scarce in Australia. In those circumstances, skilled migration should not automatically be portrayed as displacing Australians from employment. Properly targeted skilled migration can instead enable Australian businesses to operate, expand and employ more people.
This is particularly important because Australia is simultaneously confronting housing and infrastructure shortages while debating substantial reductions in migration. There is an obvious tension in arguing that Australia urgently needs more houses, hospitals, infrastructure and productive capacity while disregarding the workforce required to deliver them. Migrants do not merely consume housing and infrastructure; many migrants work in the industries that design, construct, finance, maintain and service them. That does not mean migration should be unlimited, but it does mean that cutting migration without examining who is being removed from the system can produce consequences that are very different from the political promise.
Business and industry groups have consequently expressed concern about indiscriminate reductions to skilled migration. Recent reporting has highlighted warnings from major business and industry organisations that Australia continues to require overseas workers for significant projects and areas of workforce demand. The appropriate response is not to accept every demand from business for additional migration. Governments should scrutinise claims of skills shortages and ensure Australian workers are not being unnecessarily displaced. However, saying that the consequences for businesses simply do not matter goes too far in the opposite direction.
Where I Believe Pauline Hanson Migration Cuts Has a Point
There is nevertheless an important part of Senator Hanson's argument that the migration industry should be prepared to acknowledge. Australians are entitled to ask how many additional people the country can sustainably accommodate. Migration policy exists to serve Australia's national interest, not the interests of migration agents, universities, employers, property developers or prospective migrants. If migration is occurring at a level that materially exceeds Australia's capacity to provide housing, infrastructure and essential services, governments have an obligation to respond.
The post-COVID experience demonstrates why that debate is legitimate. Australia's Net Overseas Migration increased dramatically after the borders reopened. Although it has subsequently fallen substantially, the rapid increase in population exposed weaknesses in housing supply and infrastructure planning and intensified an already difficult political debate about population growth. It would be unreasonable to pretend that hundreds of thousands of additional residents have no effect on housing demand or public infrastructure. Migration brings substantial benefits, but those benefits do not make its costs disappear.
Where I disagree with Senator Hanson is in treating a dramatic reduction in migration as though the number itself constitutes a complete policy. It does not. A migration target tells us how many people a political party wants to remove from the equation; it does not necessarily tell us which people should be removed, what economic contribution they would otherwise have made, which industries would lose access to workers, or how the reduction would affect Australia's longer-term demographic and workforce requirements.
That distinction becomes particularly important when we consider One Nation's headline figure of 130,000. There has been considerable confusion during August about precisely how that number should operate. On 6 August, Senator Hanson was reported as saying the figure related to permanent migration rather than Net Overseas Migration. One Nation subsequently clarified that its policy is to reduce Net Overseas Migration to 130,000, and Senator Hanson again publicly reaffirmed that position after comments from another One Nation MP generated further confusion.
Net Overseas Migration Is Not the Permanent Migration Program
This distinction is not merely technical. Net Overseas Migration and Australia's Permanent Migration Program measure fundamentally different things, yet they are routinely discussed in political debate as though they are interchangeable. NOM is a population measure based on people entering and leaving Australia and satisfying the ABS residence methodology. It can therefore include temporary visa holders, international students, working holiday makers, New Zealand citizens, returning Australian citizens and other categories of people whose movements affect Australia's resident population. Recent reporting notes, for example, that Australian citizens themselves accounted for 64,000 overseas migrant arrivals in 2024–25 and New Zealand citizens accounted for another 53,000.
The Permanent Migration Program, by contrast, concerns permanent visa places. Reducing permanent migration to 130,000 and reducing NOM to 130,000 are therefore completely different propositions. A government can determine the size and composition of its permanent migration program with considerable precision, whereas NOM is affected by the movements and behaviour of millions of people, including Australians and New Zealanders whose movements cannot simply be controlled through an annual permanent visa ceiling.
That is why Australians deserve more detail when politicians announce dramatic migration targets. If NOM is to be reduced to 130,000, the relevant question is not simply whether 130,000 sounds high or low. We need to know how that outcome would actually be achieved. How substantial would the reduction in international students be? What would happen to temporary graduates? How would skilled migration change? Which occupations would continue to receive priority? What would happen to employers in regional Australia? Would health, aged care, construction and engineering receive special treatment? What assumptions are being made about departures from Australia and the movements of Australian and New Zealand citizens?
Those are not arguments against reducing migration. They are questions that should be answered before Australians can properly assess whether a migration target is economically and practically credible. Indeed, the continuing public confusion around One Nation's figure illustrates precisely why the distinction matters. As recently as 26 August, the ABC described NOM as widely misunderstood and reported further attempts by One Nation representatives to explain how the party's 130,000 target would interact with necessary temporary-worker programs.
Australia Cannot Have Migration Without Planning for Population Growth
The migration industry also needs to accept its side of the bargain. It is not enough to defend migration by pointing to skills shortages and economic benefits while ignoring the consequences of rapid population growth. If governments believe Australia requires substantial migration, they have a corresponding responsibility to ensure that the country has the capacity to accommodate the people arriving.
That means housing construction must bear some relationship to population growth. Transport networks, hospitals, schools, water and energy infrastructure must be planned with realistic population projections. State and federal governments need to coordinate migration and infrastructure policy rather than treating them as unrelated portfolios. If Australia deliberately uses migration to increase its workforce and population, infrastructure planning must anticipate that growth rather than respond several years after it has occurred.
There should also be greater scrutiny of whether individual migration programs are actually producing the outcomes Australia requires. If an occupation is supposedly experiencing a shortage, government should be capable of demonstrating that shortage. If employers are sponsoring overseas workers, appropriate safeguards should ensure Australian wages and employment conditions are protected. If international education is creating large movements of temporary residents, government should be transparent about the economic benefits and population consequences. A serious migration policy should be capable of recognising both the benefits and the costs without pretending that either side of the equation does not exist.
In that respect, I suspect Senator Hanson and I would agree on more than some readers might expect. Migration should be designed around Australia's interests. Governments should control migration settings. Population growth should be sustainable. Australians should not be expected to accept deteriorating living standards as an unavoidable price of a migration program. Where we differ is in what should happen after those principles are accepted.
The Answer Is Better Migration, Not Simply a Smaller Number
I do not believe Australia's migration debate should ultimately be a competition between political parties to announce the smallest possible number. The objective should be to determine what migration Australia actually needs, which migrants provide the greatest long-term benefit, what level of population growth Australia can sustainably accommodate, and how migration policy can operate alongside housing, infrastructure, education and workforce planning.
There may well be circumstances in which that analysis produces a lower migration number. If Australia's infrastructure cannot accommodate a particular rate of population growth, or if a migration category is producing limited national benefit, government should be prepared to reduce it. Equally, where Australia has a genuine shortage of doctors, nurses, engineers, tradespeople or highly specialised professionals, it makes little sense to deny Australian employers access to those workers merely so that a politically attractive headline number can be achieved.
The same principle should apply to temporary migration. Australia should not confuse the economic value of a migrant with the permanence of their visa, nor assume that every temporary migrant produces the same outcome. International students, temporary skilled workers, working holiday makers and temporary graduates interact with the Australian economy in very different ways. A sophisticated migration system should distinguish between them and assess whether the scale and composition of each program remains in Australia's interests.
This is also why I care if Australian businesses are harmed by migration policy. That does not mean business interests should override housing affordability, infrastructure capacity or the interests of Australian workers. It means those business consequences form part of the national-interest calculation. If an Australian company cannot obtain the specialised engineer required to complete a project, if an aged-care provider cannot recruit sufficient qualified staff, if a regional business cannot find workers, or if a construction company cannot secure the expertise required to build additional housing, those consequences eventually affect Australians as well.
Australia Deserves a Better Migration Debate
Migration has become one of the easiest political issues on which to generate anger because almost every Australian can identify something that appears connected to population growth. Housing is expensive, roads are congested, public services are under pressure and the population has grown rapidly. It is therefore understandable that a politician promising dramatic migration reductions will find an audience.
However, migration policy is considerably more complicated than identifying the frustrations and promising to make the number smaller. Australia has an ageing population, relatively low natural population growth, significant workforce requirements and an economy that has become deeply connected to international labour, education and skills. At the same time, the country faces genuine constraints in housing and infrastructure that cannot be ignored. Good policy has to confront both realities simultaneously.
My disagreement with Pauline Hanson is therefore not that she wants Australians to debate migration. I believe we should debate it, openly and seriously. Nor do I believe every criticism she makes about the present level of migration should automatically be dismissed. Some of the questions she raises about housing, infrastructure and the sustainability of population growth are questions governments should be required to answer.
Where I disagree is with the proposition that we need not care about the economic consequences of the solution. Australian businesses matter. Australian workers matter. Housing matters. Infrastructure matters. Population growth matters. Skills shortages matter. The integrity of the migration system matters. A responsible migration policy has to balance all of those interests rather than selecting one and pretending the others do not exist.
Pauline Hanson is right to demand a national debate about migration. However, when the subject is something as consequential as Australia's future population, workforce and economy, I believe Australians deserve a migration policy built on evidence, careful selection and long-term planning rather than a debate that ends with the words “I don't care.”
— Youssef Haddad - Principal Director Immigration Law Matters Australia
This article represents the author's opinion on Australian migration policy and is not an endorsement of, or opposition to, any political party.
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