A prominent Australian economist has backed One Nation’s proposed 130,000 net overseas migration target as the most sensible of the competing approaches being put forward by the nation’s major political forces, adding fresh fuel to an increasingly heated debate over population growth, housing and infrastructure.
Leith van Onselen, chief economist at MB Fund and MB Super and a co-founder of MacroBusiness, compared the positions being promoted by Labor, the Coalition and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation during a recent radio discussion on migration.
Van Onselen, who has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs, said his personal assessment was that One Nation’s proposed level of 130,000 net overseas migrants a year was the most sensible of the three approaches.
The comments were subsequently highlighted by Sydney radio station 2GB under the headline “Pauline wins”, with presenter Ben Fordham describing One Nation as receiving the “gold star” in the comparison.
That distinction is important. The “gold star” language was Fordham’s characterisation of the economist’s assessment, rather than a direct quote from van Onselen himself.
What van Onselen did argue was that a net migration level of around 130,000 should not automatically be regarded as an extreme position when placed against Australia’s historical migration numbers.
He pointed to the early 2000s, when net overseas migration was substantially lower than it has been during the post-pandemic period.
Historical Australian Bureau of Statistics data support the broad comparison. Across the five financial years from 2000–01 to 2004–05, Australia recorded net overseas migration of about 135,700, 110,600, 116,500, 100,000 and 123,800 respectively.
That works out at an average of roughly 117,000 a year — below One Nation’s proposed 130,000 figure.
Australia’s current position is dramatically different.
The latest ABS population figures show net overseas migration contributed about 301,000 people to Australia’s population in the 12 months to December 2025.
That figure has fallen considerably from the extraordinary post-pandemic peak, when annual NOM reached more than 550,000, but it remains well above levels recorded through much of Australia’s recent history.
The Albanese government is forecasting a further decline.
Federal budget figures project net overseas migration of 245,000 in 2026–27, before falling to 225,000 in 2027–28 and remaining around that level through the end of the decade.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has increasingly described the 225,000 figure as the government’s target, as Labor faces growing political pressure over the effect population growth has had on housing availability, rents and public infrastructure.
The government has also begun tightening parts of the temporary migration system, with international education, working holiday visas and other temporary visa categories receiving closer scrutiny.
Labor argues, however, that migration cannot simply be reduced without considering Australia’s workforce requirements.
Hospitals, aged care providers, construction companies, farms and other industries continue to rely heavily on overseas workers, and the government maintains that skilled migration remains necessary to fill shortages that cannot immediately be met domestically.
The Coalition is proposing a different approach.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has said net overseas migration should be linked to the number of homes Australia is actually able to build.
Under that model, the number of new dwellings completed would effectively help determine the migration ceiling for the following period.
Taylor has said he expects that figure to sit well below 200,000 under current construction conditions.
Liberal housing spokesman Andrew Bragg has previously suggested a figure of about 180,000, although senior Coalition figures subsequently made clear that this was not yet a final party target.
The Coalition therefore has a mechanism it wants to use, rather than a fixed migration number locked in for the 2028 federal election.
One Nation has gone further by repeatedly stating that it wants net overseas migration reduced to 130,000.
Hanson and senior party figures have argued that population growth is running ahead of Australia’s ability to provide homes, roads, hospitals, schools and other essential infrastructure.
They have also proposed reducing international student numbers, tightening temporary graduate visas and placing greater emphasis on migrants whose skills match demonstrated labour shortages.
It is that headline figure — 130,000 — that van Onselen has endorsed as the most reasonable starting point.
His argument is based partly on housing.
Australia’s population expanded rapidly after international borders reopened following the pandemic, at the same time as the country was already struggling to build enough homes.
Rental vacancy rates tightened sharply in many cities, rents increased and competition for available accommodation became intense.
Van Onselen has consistently argued that migration is a major demand-side component of that equation.
His position is straightforward: building more housing is necessary, but reducing the rate at which additional housing demand is created can also relieve pressure more quickly.
Supporters of lower migration make a similar argument about infrastructure.
A larger population does not only require more homes. It also generates additional demand for transport networks, hospitals, schools, electricity, water and other public services.
If population growth consistently outpaces governments’ ability to expand those systems, the result can be congestion and declining service availability even while the economy itself grows.
But migration policy involves economic trade-offs that make simple comparisons difficult.
Migrants do not only consume housing and services. They also work, pay taxes, start businesses, build homes, care for patients and contribute to economic activity.
Australia’s ageing population makes the workforce question particularly significant. With a greater share of Australians moving into retirement, governments face pressure to ensure enough workers remain in the labour market to support health, aged care and the broader tax base.
Van Onselen argues that Australia has alternatives to relying heavily on migration to expand the workforce.
One proposal he has promoted is making it easier for older Australians to continue working without losing as much of their age pension through the income test.
He argues that increasing labour-force participation among older Australians could unlock a substantial domestic workforce without adding further pressure to housing and infrastructure, because those people already live in the country.
One Nation has previously supported changes along those lines.
That combination — lower migration and policies designed to increase domestic workforce participation — is one reason van Onselen has rated the party’s broad approach more favourably than those of Labor and the Coalition.
There is, however, an important complication surrounding One Nation’s 130,000 figure.
While Hanson and senior figures including Barnaby Joyce have repeatedly described 130,000 as the party’s net overseas migration target, One Nation representatives have not always explained the policy consistently.
Federal MP David Farley caused confusion in August when he suggested some categories of workers could sit on top of the 130,000 figure, potentially producing a total much closer to Labor’s eventual migration level.
Hanson quickly rejected that interpretation and reiterated that One Nation’s target was 130,000 NOM.
Further questions then emerged over workers entering under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme.
Some PALM workers stay in Australia long enough to be counted in NOM while others do not, because the official ABS measure depends on the amount of time a person spends in the country.
Hanson has indicated that One Nation would preserve the Pacific labour program because of its importance to agriculture and regional industries.
That means the precise operation of a future One Nation migration policy would depend not only on its headline 130,000 target, but on which visa programs were changed and how individual migrant movements ultimately flowed through the ABS definition of NOM.
This is also why net overseas migration should not be confused with the permanent migration program.
NOM is a population measure. It includes many temporary visa holders, international students, working holiday-makers, returning Australian citizens and some New Zealand citizens, while also subtracting people who leave Australia for extended periods.
Governments therefore cannot control the number as precisely as they can set a visa allocation.
That has repeatedly caused political confusion as parties announce targets that sound straightforward but depend on millions of individual movements across Australia’s border.
The migration debate is becoming increasingly politically significant because it intersects with two of the issues voters consistently identify as major concerns: housing and the cost of living.
One Nation has sought to turn that concern into a central political dividing line.
Its recent electoral gains and stronger opinion polling have forced both Labor and the Coalition to devote more attention to migration, particularly after several years of historically high population growth.
For Hanson, the endorsement from van Onselen is politically useful because it allows One Nation to argue that its position is not simply an anti-immigration slogan but a figure that at least one economist with Treasury and financial-sector experience regards as economically defensible.
It should not, however, be presented as a consensus among economists.
Economists disagree sharply on the appropriate size and composition of Australia’s migration program, partly because different models place different weight on GDP growth, GDP per capita, productivity, wages, housing demand, demographic ageing and the fiscal contribution of migrants.
Van Onselen’s assessment is therefore one economist’s strongly expressed policy judgement, albeit from someone who has spent years analysing migration, housing and population economics.
The central numbers nevertheless show why the debate has become so intense.
Australia’s latest annual NOM is about 301,000. Labor intends to bring it towards 225,000. The Coalition expects its housing-linked model to produce a level below 200,000 under current conditions. One Nation says it wants 130,000.
The difference between those positions would amount to tens of thousands of people every year, with significant consequences for population growth, housing demand, labour supply and economic activity.
That makes the debate much bigger than whether Pauline Hanson has been awarded a rhetorical “gold star”.
The real contest is now over what rate of population growth Australia can sustainably accommodate — and which party can convince voters that it has a credible plan to get there.
