One Nation Says It Wants to Cut Migration. The Numbers Tell a Different Story.
One Nation MP David Farley went on ABC's Insiders on 23 August 2026 and admitted his party's migration target is "not too different" to Labor's. That is a strange thing for a politician whose party promises to slash migration to 130,000 people a year.
It is also the second time Farley has said something like this. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson previously told him off for making a similar claim about immigration.
So what is going on? One Nation's official policy says it will cap migration at 130,000 people a year. But on Insiders, Farley said that number excludes certain workers Australia needs — skilled workers like aged care nurses, backpackers, and workers from Pacific nations and Timor-Leste through a scheme called PALM. He expects at least 100,000 of these extra workers on top of the 130,000.
Add those back in and the real number is about 230,000 a year.
The figure everyone argues about is called net overseas migration, or NOM. It basically means the number of people who move to Australia minus the number who leave. Tourists do not count. It includes Australians coming home from living overseas. The government uses this number to plan things like housing and roads.
For comparison, the government expects NOM to be 245,000 in 2026-27 and 225,000 the year after. So One Nation's real number of 230,000 is only about 15,000 less than what Labor is forecasting. That is what Farley meant by "not too different."
The party's story about the 130,000 figure has changed before. One Nation's own policy document calls it a hard cap, which would actually push migration below zero. Barnaby Joyce, who left the Nationals to join One Nation in December 2025, has said the 130,000 is more of a target. An AAP report from April 2026 quoted Farley calling the 130,000 target "the right one." Michelle Grattan wrote in The Conversation on 18 August that Farley was already hinting at extra workers on top of the cap. Each time, the number creeps up.
Here is the catch. The workers Farley wants to exclude — skilled workers, backpackers and PALM labour — are all counted in NOM by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. You cannot take them out just by calling them something else.
The broader context here is that migration is a hot topic across parliament right now. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke pulled out of a National Press Club speech in August 2026 because of disagreements inside the government. The Coalition will not give an exact number but Opposition Leader Angus Taylor says it will be "well below 200,000." By Farley's own maths, One Nation is now floating a number higher than the Coalition's and almost the same as Labor's.
In my view, the problem is simple. You cannot campaign on a 130,000 cap and then, when someone checks the maths, say it is really 230,000. Farley's argument that temporary workers are not really part of migration is a nice line, but it is not how the numbers work. The bureau counts them. The budget counts them. Housing and infrastructure planning counts them. If One Nation is running a migration policy, it is running one at about 230,000 — and Hanson has already told her own MP off for saying so.
Whether Hanson disciplines Farley again, or whether the party changes its policy to match the real number, is now up to One Nation. Everyone else in parliament will be watching to see which number the party takes to the next election.
