Nats, conservative Libs cause new immigration headache for Ley

The Nationals and conservative Liberals, fresh from pushing Opposition Leader Sussan Ley to scrap climate targets, have opened up a fresh debate on migration settings that they argue have outpaced infrastructure and driven up house prices.

Ley moved to head off an internal spat on immigration on Thursday evening, nominating the issue as the next item on the opposition’s agenda and saying the intake “needs to be lower” even as she battles to win back migrant voters.

Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie told this masthead the nation needed an urgent debate on migrant numbers, particularly of international students, as she prepares to launch a Senate inquiry to shape a new Coalition policy.

“It’s long past time for an honest, respectful conversation with the Australian people about our future population and settlement arrangements,” McKenzie said. She added that Australia was built on waves of migration and should be proud of that, but had not had a population plan for decades.

“Traditionally in Australia we bring large cohorts of people into the country before planning the infrastructure, housing and services to accommodate them – it should be the other way around.”

Ley pre-empted the challenge to the stability of her leadership by putting migration on the agenda at the annual John Howard Lecture on Thursday, hours after settling her party’s debate over net zero.

Howard, who was in attendance at the Menzies Centre event, used a question-and-answer session to ask Ley what policy issue she wanted to thrash out next.

“One is migration,” she replied, to applause. “I have said it needs to be lower.”

“I think this is a conversation Australians are up for, and we will do it in a respectful way, and we will develop a policy that recognises it’s not just about one overall number.”

Australia’s population has grown by about 1 or 2 per cent a year for the past two decades. Declining birth rates mean most of that growth has come from migration, propping up GDP figures as productivity has slowed and living standards have stagnated. Migration surged after the COVID-era border closures were lifted, but has been declining since its peak.

Ley will be under intense pressure from the Liberals’ Right faction on the issue, who have been emboldened by their triumph over the Moderates on energy policy.

Conservative West Australian MP Ben Small said the party could make similar arguments about power and home prices.

“These issues are both failures that are hurting Australians and their standard of living – so we must also go after migration levels while putting Australians first in the energy debate,” Small said.

But the Liberals’ new energy and climate platform, thrashed out on Thursday after weeks of sparring over the 2050 net zero pledge, had begun to show cracks on Friday as leading Moderate Andrew Bragg suggested the party would still be “shooting for” net zero. Ley had said a day earlier that carbon neutrality would be a “welcome outcome”, but “we are not pursuing net zero”.

There is hope inside the party that the migration debate can be less toxic than the one on energy, in part because right-winger Jonno Duniam has been installed as home affairs spokesman and has vowed to lower the temperature of the discussion, and there is no binary point of conflict as there was with the 2050 target.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said last month that the government did not have a target number for migration, though it does have forecasts.

The opposition leader sacked Jacinta Nampijinpa Price from her frontbench in September after the senator suggested Labor was bringing Indian migrants into the country to gain votes and then refused to support Ley’s leadership. Price later said her words were taken out of context.

In a reflection of the damage control Ley undertook after Price’s comments, and indicating the direction she hopes to take in prosecuting a case against Labor’s policies, Ley said on Thursday: “The problems we’re facing are not the fault of any migrant or migrant community. They are failings of infrastructure.”

Andrew Hastie, considered by many colleagues as a prospective challenger to Ley, quit the frontbench last month after claiming he had been sidelined from developing the Coalition’s immigration policy despite his role as the Coalition’s home affairs spokesman.

On Friday, Ley batted away suggestions that dumping net zero could pave the way for the return of rebellious backbenchers to the shadow ministry, which she labelled as “solid” in its current form.

“My frontbench is my frontbench, but everyone has a role to play,” the opposition leader told Sky News.

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