Burke to reveal migration overhaul at Press Club on Thursday, ending weeks of confusion

Labor will release a contentious migration crackdown before Anthony Albanese departs to the United Nations in New York on Friday, but it will struggle to enact the strongest measures aimed at cutting back bogus asylum claims and visa-hopping graduates.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke will reveal the government’s plans in a speech at the National Press Club on Thursday. His initial speech was cancelled early last month, leaving a void that has fuelled weeks of speculation and allowed One Nation and the Coalition to showcase their plans for more drastic cuts.

Immigration Minister Tony Burke, left, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during parliamentary question time on Tuesday.Alex EllinghausenBurke will not announce a cut in numbers. Rather, he will outline new methods to bring net migration down from 305,000 to 225,000 over two years, after years of overshooting targets.

The government also wants to cut back on bridging visas, which have blown out under its watch, and overhaul the Administrative Review Tribunal to slash the backlog. In the May budget, Labor said it would rework the skills program to make sure Australia was bringing in younger, higher-skilled migrants, a plan likely to be fleshed out on Thursday.

The title of Burke’s speech is: “The work of managing the migration program: who arrives, who stays, who leaves.”

The prime minister could not convince Opposition Leader Angus Taylor to pass legislation that this masthead revealed would have included new rules banning asylum claims after a few months of being in Australia and curtailing students’ right of appeal to extend their stay.

Labor hopes they can be resurrected at some point if the Coalition comes to the table in the future, although the opposition is worried about One Nation leader Pauline Hanson attacking them if they agree to work with the government on migration.

Until then, Burke is left with regulatory changes that do not require laws to be passed in the parliament, where Labor has no support on the left or right for its plans.

Albanese had told colleagues weeks ago that he did not believe Burke should use the press club to make the announcement, which would only serve to elevate a policy issue on which Hanson was setting the terms.

But Burke’s speech will go ahead on Thursday, the same day the Australian Bureau of Statistics releases the latest set of migration figures that will add to political pressure on Labor.

This masthead has previously reported that Burke is considering enhancing deportation efforts for the 77,000 unlawful non-citizens in Australia, considering cutting back on partner visas, curbing backpacker visas, and other plans to stop visa-hopping and making it harder for people to appeal decisions and stay in the country.

Burke initially delayed his pitch to increase the government’s control of the migration system to avoid the need to backflip on undercooked measures, as Labor has been forced to do with its tax changes in the May budget.

One Nation on Monday revealed its own migration policy, promising to cut by 750,000 Australia’s stock of 3 million temporary visas, cap student visas at 100,000 per year for three years and severely restrict entry for the families of students and those granted skilled worker visas.

Hanson argues that her drastic cuts are worth a temporary hit to the economy, as she and her treasury spokesman Barnaby Joyce dismissed criticisms from business groups, universities, farmers and economists that her aim of negative net migration would be recessionary.

Taylor pledged to match migration to housing supply in his budget reply speech, and the Coalition is still finalising its own policies.

Opposition housing spokesman Jonno Duniam said that while Labor had failed to rein in migration, One Nation’s policy lacked any real detail.

“It’s great to throw out some numbers,” he said on News24. “Some of them [visas] are uncapped. Some of them are capped. We’re not sure which ones, what impact it will have on the economy. Sorry, that is not a robust piece of work.”

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