Australia’s Coalition has ruled out a One Nation-style immigration policy based on migrants’ countries of origin, as Opposition Leader Angus Taylor seeks to draw support from voters moving to the minor party on the right.
Mr Taylor said the Coalition would instead assess applicants individually, despite previously referring to “bad people” from “bad countries” as requiring stricter checks.
“I’ve always said that we would discriminate not based on the country someone comes from, or their race, or their religion, but based on the person, and whether that person is a suitable person to be a resident or citizen of this country,” he told ABC’s Insiders programme.
“That’s what we should focus on and we should judge people on their character and conduct, not the colour of their skin.”
The Coalition’s migration policy, unveiled by Mr Taylor on Tuesday, places “Australian values” at the centre of the immigration system. Its position has been presented as a middle path between the Labor government and One Nation, which has advocated a list of countries whose nationals would be barred.
Mr Taylor’s language has become more restrained since he announced the first part of the policy in April. At that time, he said all 1,700 Gazans in Australia on visas posed high risks and should be “re-assessed entirely with far greater scrutiny”. He also raised concerns about migrants from Iran.
Mr Taylor linked the Coalition’s approach to the Bondi massacre, which was carried out by a permanent resident who came to Australia during the Howard premiership and his Australian citizen son.
He accused Labor of lowering the standards applied to migrants entering Australia and criticised the abolition of an intelligence unit within the Department of Home Affairs. However, he acknowledged that it was impossible to know what effect the unit’s abolition had or whether retaining it could have prevented an attack.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has said disbanding the unit weakened the department’s ability to turn intelligence into coherent policy advice. It also said that machinery-of-government changes in 2025, which brought ASIO and the Australian Federal Police back under the Home Affairs umbrella, had rebuilt the connection between national security operations and strategic policymaking.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke defended the government’s measures, saying Australia had its toughest-ever powers to stop violent extremists entering the country.
“I’ve been using them to be able to scan and assess whether someone has a history of being a problem before we give them a visa, and we’ve been cancelling visas when people are here, and we’ve been stopping people from coming here in the first place,” he told News24.
