Right-wing leaders tout migrant crackdowns before poll
· Michael West
Right-wing parties have used an anti-immigration rally to stake out their credentials to disgruntled voters ahead of a tightly fought by-election.
The coalition parties and a resurgent One Nation are fighting for the Liberal-held seat of Farrer, where the minor right-wing party appears to have inched ahead among voters discontent with mainstream politics.
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One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and Nationals leader Matt Canavan both sought to tap into the sentiment in front of a hundreds-strong crowd at a march to “end mass immigration” in Canberra on Sunday.
Hundreds of people have gathered in Canberra to call for Australia to “end mass immigration”. (Mick Tsikas/AAP PHOTOS)Senator Hanson, who has called for annual immigration levels to be capped at 130,000 people, said further tightening of migration policies was needed.
“Why haven’t (politicians) done anything about the mass migration that’s coming into Australia,” she told the rally.
“I am not against migration at all. You have to do it in a managed way. You have to bring in the right people who want to assimilate.”
The One Nation leader was censured in the Senate in March for claiming in an interview there were “no good Muslims”.
Senator Canavan also used his speech at the rally to tout the tough-on-immigration policies the federal coalition has pledged to implement if it wins power.
“(Liberal prime ministers) Tony Abbott, John Howard stopped the boats,” he said.
“They secured our borders. We’re going to do it again.
“We’re going to check who’s coming to this country, going to have better standards, and we’re going to bring the numbers down.”
Matt Canavan says Tony Abbott and John Howard stopped the boats – “and we’re going to do it again”. (Mick Tsikas/AAP PHOTOS)Voting in the regional NSW electorate, triggered by the resignation of former opposition leader Sussan Ley, is shaping as a contest between One Nation’s David Farley and independent candidate Michelle Milthorpe.
The coalition has held the seat since it was established, but a recent poll indicates One Nation’s candidate is the frontrunner to win the party’s first lower-house seat.
The looming electoral showdown comes as Opposition Leader Angus Taylor says stricter checks are needed to ensure “bad people” from “bad countries” don’t come to Australia.
But Mr Taylor refused to clarify which countries should be considered bad when pressed on the comments, which follow the release of the first stage of the coalition’s immigration policy earlier in April.
The plan was criticised by various groups, with one Labor frontbencher labelling it “desperate dog-whistling”.
The Liberal Party leader said immigrants who did not come from like-minded nations had made Australia better, but there needed to be a more stringent look at the values of migrants from some countries.
Voter discontent with the major parties will be tested in the Farrer by-election. (Mick Tsikas/AAP PHOTOS)In his speech announcing the policy in mid-April, Mr Taylor said immigration screening should be based on beliefs, adding that people who came from liberal democracies were more likely to adopt Australian values.
“Let’s be clear, some of the great Australians have come from countries that were bad countries at the time,” he told ABC’s Insiders program.
“There is a higher risk that some bad people come from those bad countries and so what we have to do is we have to screen not based on country of origin, not based on race, but based on values.”
Asked which countries were bad, Mr Taylor would only mention Iran by name, refusing to say whether he considered nations such as the communist party-run China as part of the same group.
He would not say whether One Nation’s target of 130,000 migrants was the right one, only noting that current levels were too high and the figure needed to be “sustainable”.
Net overseas migration stood at more than 300,000 people in the 2024/25 financial year, although the figure has been declining following a surge of post-COVID-19 immigration.