Karen Middleton

So they had forecast in the mid-year budget update that the 2025-26 budget

level of net overseas migration would be 260,000.

In fact, they're now saying it's going to be 295,000.

So that's a blowout of 35,000.

They say that's because not as many people are leaving the country as there had been before.

But on the whole, there's a new emphasis or an even greater emphasis on skilled migrants, on highly educated migrants.

and on people already here in Australia.

So they're kind of pulling the drawbridge up a little bit on new migrants.

And you've got to assume that that's at least in part a response to the sort of political climate we're seeing that delivered Pauline Hanson and her One Nation Party a seat in the electorate of Farrar on the weekend.

And that is becoming a big issue around Australia today.

with the connection between the number of migrants since the COVID lockdowns and border closures and the economic pressures people are facing, whether or not those connections are fair, that's certainly something that people are feeling.

And the government is making a point of emphasising a tightening of the migration system in this budget.

And it seems to be looking to those sort of sentiments.

I think it's, I mean, I think it is certainly moving in that direction.

And as we've been saying, there'll be debate about whether it goes far enough.

Certainly there are some in the community that will point to what is still being spent on things like the AUKUS submarine deal and things that weren't done, like the decision not to tax the gas industry in a more onerous manner and say, well,

why are you sort of doing these things and not doing those things?

And there are places you could be saving money.

But I think they have made some pretty hard decisions here that will probably ultimately be beneficial for the economy and fairer for the economy, but they're going to be hard to manage in the short term.

It's interesting, going back to the point we discussed about the feedback they're getting from Australians about