Steve Price: Australian correspondent on One Nation looking to bring down the number of international students

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What new immigration targets is One Nation proposing for temporary migrants?

Mike Hosking 0:00
In Australia, Steve Price, very good morning to you. Morning. Now one nascent, what have we got? Uh slashing the immigration numbers. Uh d is are they to one thirty? Are they down to one thirty? Is that their number?
Steve Price 0:11
They're going to get it even lower than that, I would say. And speaking of right versus left politics, they're not shy to put out policy. This will be announced today, as reported this morning. They're going to take temporary skilled visa levels back to the twenty seventeen levels. So twenty seventeen as in the the year. They're going to slash international student numbers back to one hundred and fifteen thousand a year. Uh and they want the net overseas migration, the non, which is As you know, the people who leave and the people who come and you work out what the difference is, uh they're gonna do that for three years and get it back to one hundred thirty, one thirty thousand.

How does One Nation plan to reduce international student numbers to 115,000 per year?

Steve Price 0:49
Uh so it'll be initial three year clack crackdown according to Pauline Hanson on visa overstayers, temporary visa holders. Uh some of those would be Kiwis, bridging visas and international students, and those slash migration levels by about seven hundred and sixty six thousand. Currently, Treasury expects overseas migration to come in at around two hundred sixty. for twenty five twenty-six before dropping back to two hundred and twenty five thousand. Why is this all important? Well, One Nation's polling numbers are where they are because of the noises they've been making about immigration. And immigration's a big issue because of housing crisis where people can't find places to live and they are saying to themselves, well why does the government keep bringing in so many people?
Steve Price 1:34
On the other side of that argument is people like the the rural farming lobby who say if we we slash all these student visas, who's gonna come and pick the grapes and the apples and all of that? Uh and of course you you have casual work in in cafes that are all done by overseas students. So The debate is on. I mean this is at the the far uh level of cut cut. The coalition will come in somewhere in in the middle. They've not been brave enough to come out with anything yet. And in fact Anthony Albanese has been sitting down with Angus Toto, the opposition leader, to try and come up with a compromise.

Why are housing shortages linked to the party’s immigration cuts?

Mike Hosking 2:09
Yeah, exactly. I raised that with you on Friday. Will they get to a compromise? I mean how I mean h how political is this to the extent that you do need people to do jobs and it's not all about overstayers and scallywags, is it?
Steve Price 2:23
Hundred percent, yeah, you're quite right. I don't think they will come to a compromise. I think they'll nudge up close together to try and shine a light on how radical one nation is in what they want to do, but in the end, with the election not until twenty twenty eight. Uh the coalition will go its own way, I would imagine.
Mike Hosking 2:40
Interesting. How much pressure on the government to start coughing some money for the diesel and bring back the fuel thing now that, you know, things have gone P shaped in the Middle East again?
Steve Price 2:48
Well, a lot because of the impact that it had when they did it last time. So uh fuel excise cuts. I mean diesel I saw across the weekend is now approaching two dollars sixty Australian a litre.

What concerns do rural and agricultural groups have about slashing student visas?

Steve Price 3:02
Uh but the problem is if they go back in and do what they did in the origin originally, which was cut the excise in half, uh, you've got an inflationary impact on that, with a reserve bank sitting around wondering if they can raise interest if they have to raise interest rates again. I mean unleaded uh back then peaked at two dollars sixty. Diesel got up as high as three dollars twenty seven. So they halved it, uh they halved it for three months. What do you reckon that cost the budget? That cost us two point five billion dollars in lost excise tax. Now as I was writing all those figures down today I mean um The the actual uh exercise is um is so high. I I wonder why do we have such high taxes on petrol?
Steve Price 3:48
Well d well see in this country we
Mike Hosking 3:50
we link them directly to the road. So in other words it's it's the only tax we've got that's tied to the tied to specific outcomes.

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