Five days later, Hanson still struggles to articulate migration policy

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has again appeared to confuse her party’s immigration policy despite more than a week of scrutiny over her position – suggesting there would be both positive and negative overall migration levels in the same conversation.

Asked to clear up her migration numbers during a panel interview at the News Corp Bush Summit on Thursday, Hanson said One Nation’s policy was for “130,000 net migration in this country. That’s it. It’s not going to move from that.”

Net migration refers to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ calculation of how many long-term migrants arrive in the country each year, minus those who depart. This counts people who remain in Australia for 12 months in a 16-month period, and includes returning Australian citizens.

Net overseas migration last year was 306,000, but Labor has forecast bringing this down to 225,000 in two years.

But Hanson then appeared to confuse net migration with permanent migration. She went on to say the net migration figure of 130,000 referred to people who would be granted permanent residency and move on to citizenship – which is a different category.

The government currently grants 185,000 permanent visas each year, with the majority going to people already living in Australia. The net overseas migration figure includes these people, as well as Australians, New Zealanders and temporary visa holders such as backpackers and students.

Hanson said additional visas would still be granted. “Visa holders are totally different category. We’re talking about permanent residents that are going to move on to citizenship in the country [with the 130,000]. So your visas are totally different,” she said.

“On top of that, you can have your PALM [Pacific] workers , you can have your visa holders in different ones in the country ... Rural and regional Australia would die if they didn’t have the workers coming in, and especially the abattoirs and the farmers. So that’s a different program.”

This appeared to be the same argument that One Nation MP David Farley made to the ABC’s Insiders program last weekend. Farley was pulled into line after saying there would be net migration of 130,000, with Pacific Australia Labour Mobility and other regional visas issued on top.

He admitted this would be “not too different” in size to the Albanese government’s plans.

Hanson, however, said Farley had been wrong. “David Farley was – he didn’t understand. He got confused about the visa holders,” she said.

The point of difference seems to be that One Nation continues to conflate their language when it comes to net overseas migration and permanent visas, despite them being different measures.

Farley and MP Barnaby Joyce have both maintained the party’s policy is net overseas migration of 130,000 people. This means the population grows through migration, because thousands more people are coming to Australia than departing.

Hanson and Senator Malcolm Roberts, however, appear to use net migration and permanent visas interchangeably. Permanent visas are one part of the system that feeds into the net migration intake.