Pauline Hanson accuses Labor of hiding a million migrants plan and the forecasts back her up

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has accused the Albanese government of running a secret plan to bring another million migrants into Australia over the next four years, after word from inside the government that Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke's delayed migration overhaul will leave the intake uncut.

The numbers behind the charge sit within Labor's own budget papers, buried in the forecast tables of the May budget: about 245,000 net arrivals in 2026 to 2027 once the budget's extra 20,000 is counted, then 225,000 a year through to 2030. Those forecasts add to roughly 920,000 people over four years, from a government that hasn't hit a migration forecast it's set since 2022, and the one time Burke booked a room to explain the program to voters, his cabinet colleagues stopped the speech before he gave it.

"So when Burke finally gives the speech his own cabinet blocked, here's what he's really announcing: another million people," Hanson wrote in a post on Monday. "This from a government that has never hit its own numbers. And in the worst housing and rental market we've seen."

The May papers pushed the forecasts for the next two years up and kept the promised fall parked out in 2027 to 2030, and Treasury conceded the number would run "moderately higher than previously expected" because migrants on temporary visas are leaving at lower rates than it assumed. Across the forward estimates that comes to 1.2 million arrivals between 2025 and 2030, as One News reported last week.

Her Monday post set out the record budget by budget, and the ledger matches what the budget papers promised and what the Bureau of Statistics later counted.

"Four budgets. Four promises. Four blowouts. And the highest immigration levels in Australia's recorded history," she wrote. "And it's not a small miss either. Labor's blowout since taking government is almost the size of Tasmania."

The running total is what Hanson kept coming back to. On the ABS count, close to 1.5 million people arrived on net between Labor taking office in 2022 and the end of 2025, while Home Affairs' visa statistics show just under 3 million people in the country on temporary visas, about 1 in 10 of us. Temporary migrants can't buy an established home under the government's foreign buyer ban, so nearly all of them rent, and that's where her Monday statement landed: "That's why your rent exploded, your pay went backwards, and your kids can't buy a home. It's why hospitals are turning away sick people. Labor's immigration policy has overwhelmed Australia and sent us backwards."

Burke's answer is a promise to hit the target Labor keeps missing

Burke was booked to lay out the new migration program at the National Press Club on 6 August, and the address was scrapped after cabinet colleagues pushed back while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was on leave. The speech is now expected within the fortnight, with Albanese back at the cabinet table from Monday. What's reported to survive the redraft is the number itself: the government will hold its target at 225,000 a year and sell the program as matching migration to housing, infrastructure and essential services.

The package is expected to tighten family visa rules and steer skilled places toward construction and policing, while the partner visa queue runs to about 115,000 applications for 2026 to 2027. NDIS Minister Jenny McAllister conceded on Sunday that the government has "more work to do" on skilled migration, and rejected the idea that One Nation's surge is driving the overhaul: "We don't set our policy by looking at what they do. We look at the national interest." Treasurer Jim Chalmers has kept to the defence he gave when the latest population figures landed: "Migration was surging when we came to office and it has now moderated substantially."

Matt Thistlethwaite pointed voters to a different number, and it doesn't help him

The government's direct reply came from Assistant Immigration Minister Matt Thistlethwaite, who told News24 on Monday that Hanson is counting the wrong thing. "Those numbers that Pauline Hanson refers to are net overseas migration numbers, which includes Australian citizens who are living overseas and returning home," he said. "The better figure is permanent migration. That we've set at 185,000 for the last couple of years, and we've met that figure."

There are three problems with that answer. Start with the yardstick complaint: net overseas migration is Labor's own measure. The 225,000 target, the 260,000 forecast and the 1.2 million forward book all come from the government's budget papers, and every one of them is counted the same way Hanson is counting.

Then there's the claim that the number is padded with returning Aussies. It's a net figure: everyone who leaves is subtracted from everyone who arrives, citizens included. And more Australians leave than come home. The Bureau of Statistics counted about 64,000 Australian citizens arriving in 2024 to 2025 and 81,500 leaving, a net loss of about 17,500 that sits inside the 306,000 net arrivals for that year and drags the total down instead of propping it up. Remove them from the count, as Thistlethwaite suggests, and the number he's defending gets bigger.

The 185,000 he'd rather talk about counts something different again. That's permanent visas only. Hanson's numbers count everyone who arrives and stays a year or more, and most of those people are students, working holiday makers and temporary workers who never get a permanent visa. Pointing to the permanent program to answer a question about the whole intake leaves most of the arrivals out of the answer.

It's also a ceiling the government sets for itself each year, so hitting it was never in doubt. Institute of Public Affairs analysis of the 185,001 permanent visas granted in 2024 to 2025 found only 60,474 went to a primary applicant actually assessed as a skilled worker, 1 in 3 of the whole program.

Voters were asked who handles immigration best and One Nation doubled Labor's score

National polling in May asked voters which party is best at managing immigration. In the numbers News24 published, One Nation's 36% came in at exactly double the 18% recorded for Labor and for the Coalition, with 21% undecided and the Greens on 7%.

The same story runs through every recent survey on the question. A YouGov poll published in July found 56% of voters believe multiculturalism has become a problem or never worked, and News24's earlier May polling had 62% wanting a smaller intake. Even the Coalition now promises to cap net migration at roughly the number of new homes built, about 170,000, which leaves Labor's 225,000 as the highest target of the three parties. One Nation's primary vote sat on 25% against Labor's 28% in the survey published in late July, with the full run of surveys on our Australian poll tracker.

Parliament is back today and Hanson brought the only finished migration plan

Sittings resumed in Canberra on Tuesday, and One Nation's Protecting Australians from Foreign Terrorist Fighters Bill, the party's first complete piece of legislation this term, is being introduced this week. The 22 page bill would let the Home Affairs Minister ask the Federal Court to bar people who served terrorist organisations from returning, alongside tougher passport and terrorism bail powers, and it reaches parliament with Burke already conceding existing law may require him to allow returns.

One Nation's immigration policy has been published for months with the number on the front of it, 130,000 visas a year reviewed annually, while Labor's position is a rescheduled speech nobody outside cabinet has seen. On the budget's own forecasts, a million more people arrive by 2030 whether the speech happens or not.