One Nation on Monday released a radical policy proposing Australia net overseas migration (NOM) be negative over three years, as the country reduced its temporary migrant population by 750,000.

Under its plan – the student intake would be dramatically cut, the opportunity for temporary students, graduates and temporary workers to sponsor family members would be substantially restricted, “visa hopping” would be attacked, and those here illegally would be booted from the country.

One Nation is not providing numbers for the individual years of the three-year period when the NOM would be negative. The NOM “is the net gain or loss of population through international migration to and from Australia”.

After the negative “reset”, the NOM would return to a ceiling of 130,000 under the policy. At present the NOM is about 300,000, with the government seeking to reduce it to 225,000 by 2027-28.

One Nation has pre-empted the major parties, which are yet to release their policies to curb migration. Federal cabinet was set to discuss the issue again on Monday, and the Coalition is still working on its alternative.

Last week Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Angus Taylor held two meetings to discuss whether there were common elements they could agree on for legislation.

The One Nation policy announcement comes after it last week preempted the opposition on tobacco excise and superannuation policies.

Under One Nation’s proposed immigration program:

Students would have to leave Australia when they finished their studies unless eligible for a targeted graduate pathway.

Graduate visa holders could switch to an employer-sponsored, temporary skilled visa, but not to another graduate or student visa from onshore.

Temporary skilled workers could renew their work visa if eligible, but could not switch onshore to various other temporary categories.

Visitors could not apply for another visa from within Australia, apart from an exception for family sponsored applications.

There would be carve outs for PALM (Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme) workers and backpackers, needed for regional areas. Most of these workers are not counted in the NOM.

One........

© The New Daily