Opposition leader Angus Taylor has ordered a review of seven policy areas, including a drastic cut to immigration levels. A leaked document reveals the Coalition is planning to cut Australia's annual net overseas immigration levels to 150,000-200,000, according to a confidential policy roadmap that indicates Taylor is preparing to fight a possible early election.
The internal document, circulated to senior Coalition MPs, details the key policies the opposition wants to build its election platform on as it rebuilds from its catastrophic 2025 loss. It shows Taylor wants the Coalition's full platform ready for sign-off in February 2027, suggesting he wants to be prepared if Anthony Albanese calls an early election and to avoid the last-minute policy chaos that plagued Peter Dutton's 2025 campaign.
After ousting Sussan Ley as Liberal leader in February, Taylor has been overseeing policy groups in seven priority areas: the economy, energy, families, better government services, housing, migration, and national security. Each taskforce, led by relevant shadow ministers, focuses on a specific policy problem the Coalition wants to solve.
For example, the migration taskforce is tasked with answering: 'How can Australia reduce net overseas migration to 150,000-200,000 per year while minimising budget and economic impacts and strengthening social cohesion and Australian values?' Taylor has vowed to slow arrival numbers as part of a hardline immigration strategy but has not publicly committed to a specific target.
The range under consideration would be a significant cut from the existing level of 306,000 people in 2024-2025. It would be higher than One Nation's hard 130,000-person visa cap and the Howard-era net overseas immigration level of about 100,000 supported by former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott. Dutton had pledged to cut net overseas migration to 160,000 in his first year if he won the election.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Taylor did not dispute that a 150,000-200,000 target is under consideration. 'As the leader has said, on migration the numbers have been too high and the standards have been too low,' the spokesperson said. 'We have announced the first instalment of our Australian Values First Migration Plan and will have more to say over the term. We are considering the full range of options because migration must be at a level Australia can absorb, with enough homes, services and social cohesion to support it.'
Taylor last month unveiled the first planks of an immigration policy designed to discriminate against people who do not subscribe to 'Australian values'. His suggestion that migrants from liberal democracies are more likely to integrate raised internal concerns about further alienating Chinese Australians, who abandoned the Coalition at the past two federal elections. Managing the relationship with Chinese Australians is part of the brief for Taylor's taskforce on national security.
'How can the Coalition talk candidly and with moral clarity about our security environment, while ensuring that Chinese Australians feel celebrated for their past and future contributions to Australia?' the internal policy roadmap states. The document reveals the Coalition wants to lift productivity by 0.5 to 0.7% per year and improve housing affordability within two years.
The taskforce on families has been asked to look at options for a sweeping overhaul of the education, tax-and-transfer, and social policy system to encourage 'workforce participation and family formation'. The government services taskforce will explore options to reduce costs, including through 'right-sizing' the public service, opening the door to potential cuts to the federal bureaucracy.
The document shows the Coalition is planning a messaging blitz of voters in 33 target seats to coincide with next Thursday's budget-in-reply speech, a platform traditionally used by opposition leaders to announce new policy. The roadmap states the Coalition wants a full platform of policies 'ready for pre-election finalisation and sign-off' in February 2027, more than a year out from the scheduled date of the next federal election.
'We are doing the policy work early because Australians deserve a serious, costed and credible alternative to a government that has lost control of the economy, the budget and our borders,' the opposition leader's spokesman said.
