On May 14, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor explained to Australians the Coalition’s plans for managing the nation’s future expenditure. In his response to the Government’s 2026-27 Budget, Taylor detailed the Coalition’s plans to cut immigration and expand fossil fuel usage to reduce energy prices.

The Coalition aims to align immigration numbers with the quantity of houses being constructed each year. Simply, if houses aren’t being built, then the Coalition won’t be opening its borders.

“The Coalition will deliver one of the biggest cuts to immigration in the history of this country,” Taylor said in his budget reply.

“We will process and deport 70,000 overstayers who have no legal right to stay”.

This process would possibly include deporting tax-paying permanent residents who either aren’t able to obtain Australian citizenship, and/or have waited the average 2 to 4 year waiting period to access welfare.

The Grattan Institute’s Brendan Coates and Trent Wiltshire reported in 2024 that skilled migrants pay more in taxes than they receive through government services. Subsequently, cuts to permanent skilled migrants would lead to higher taxes or fewer services for Australians.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, China and India were among the top five countries of birth for people migrating to and from Australia in 2024-25.

Neither China or India officially recognise dual citizenship. Subsequently, if Chinese or Indian nationals were to gain Australian citizenship, they would automatically lose their Chinese or Indian citizenship, putting them at risk of losing assets, including property, and potentially making it more difficult for them to return to their country of origin.

“We allow dual citizenship in this country, other countries made choices about that… That is up to them… We allow continued dual citizenship, but ultimately some people will have to make a choice,” Taylor said in an interview with Sky News.          

Taylor plans to stop non-citizens in Australia from receiving 17 government benefits and payments, including the age pension and access to the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Government welfare would be provided only to citizens under Taylor’s Coalition government.

This plan would also require permanent Australian visa holders to learn English.

Immigration and the Housing Crisis

The Coalition’s budget response emphasised the Opposition’s belief that the housing crisis is connected to high rates of immigration.

“What we’re proposing here is each year the housing minister would say we’ve built this many houses, and so the immigration number, the net overseas migration, can be X,” Taylor stated in an interview with Sky News.

Coates and Wiltshire’s report found that cutting the intake of permanent migrants would not immediately ease demand for housing, as nearly two thirds of permanent skilled visas go to migrants already living in Australia.

However, the report states that lowering migration levels and reducing net overseas migration would contribute to lower housing costs, because of course, migrants need somewhere to live.

Based on the current rate of houses being built, the Coalition intends to cut the rate of immigration by at least 70 per cent from Labor’s peak immigration numbers, which equates to “well below 200,000”, according to the Opposition Leader.

However, immigration isn’t the sole cause of Australia’s current housing crisis. Ilan Wiesel, Professor in Urban Geography at the University of Melbourne, spoke to Farrago about the issues contributing to this issue. 

“Immigration is a factor, but only one among many, and its contribution to house price growth in recent decades is far smaller than anti‑immigration campaigns suggest,” Wiesel said.

“Many of the trades and professions we rely on to build homes – such as engineers, surveyors, labourers – are filled by immigrants. Capping immigration too aggressively risks worsening skill shortages, slowing construction and limiting housing supply when we need to increase it.”

In 2025, there was a 16 per cent increase in ‘totally empty’ houses, raising the total to 31,890 in Melbourne alone.

Moreover, approximately 110,000 Melbourne homes are either empty or underused dwellings.

According to Prosper Australia, Melbourne has enough vacant housing to provide two houses for each person on the Victorian public housing waitlist.

Some owners voluntarily leave these houses empty due to the inconvenience posed by renting them out.

For property owners who do not intend to be in the housing market long-term, leaving properties they plan to sell vacant may be more beneficial than renting them out, as vacant houses sell at a higher price. Within the housing market, the difference in the price of a vacant home and a rented home can be substantial enough that rental income over a short-time-period would not offset this loss in property value.

“On the existing stock, taxes or levies on vacant land and empty dwellings can encourage better use of what we already have, rather than allowing homes to sit unused in the middle of a shortage,” Wiesel said.

The Coalition stated that it would fund a new $5 billion housing infrastructure fund and make alterations to the national construction code to speed up building at a cheaper price.

Impact on International Students

In his budget reply and in subsequent interviews, Taylor had refused to provide a number for how many immigrants the Coalition would accept into the country, and has instead stated Australians will have to wait until the next federal election for answers.

The lack of clarity on proposed immigration cuts has had an impact on major universities across the country.

“It’s obvious that a migration cut of that magnitude would mean going after international students,”  Dr Alison Barnes, national president of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) stated.

International students, according to the NTEU form a third of net overseas migration, and according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics made up the largest group of migrant arrivals during the 2024-25 financial year time-period, with approximately 157,000 people.

“Fewer international students won’t fix the housing crisis,” Barnes said.

“More often than not they’re living in accommodation like extra bedrooms, on campuses or other rooms that locals don’t want to or can’t live in.”

International students are already facing factors, from rising tuition fees and visa costs that are making tertiary education in Australia less accessible.

Climate Change and Housing

With regard to climate change, the Coalition’s intentions are clear: prioritise the price and quantity of energy via any method necessary.

“A Coalition government will work with coal-fired power plant owners to keep them running as long and as hard as possible, to get electricity prices down,” Taylor stated in his budget response. 

Taylor used his budget response to declare that the Coalition wants to dig and drill.

The Coalition also aims to abolish the Labor government’s Safeguard Mechanism, a policy created to reduce emissions at Australia’s largest industrial facilities by setting legislated limits on the greenhouse gas emissions they produce.

Nonetheless, according to Wiesel, natural disasters influenced by climate change, such as bushfires and floods, have made thousands of homes effectively unliveable. Such catastrophes damage homes, increase insurance premiums, and make certain areas of Australia unlivable during certain seasons.

“The Climate Council estimates that around 650,000 homes in Australia are at “high risk” from climate change,” Wiesel stated.

According to researchers at the University of Sydney, greenhouse gas emissions will impact the future of Australia’s housing crisis. Understandably, the higher the emissions, the harder it will be to find a home.

The study also found that if Australia was to produce higher emissions, homelessness could rise to roughly four times its current level within the next ten years.

One Nation’s Copycat

The Coalition’s influence over Australian politics has also been waning, with the anti-immigration One Nation party rising at the Coalition’s expense.

On May 9, the Coalition lost the seat of former Liberal leader Sussan Ley in the Farrer by-election, with One Nation securing its first ever federal lower house seat in an election. The Coalition currently trails One Nation in opinion polling, with One Nation at 27 per cent in the latest Newspoll, and the Coalition at just 20 per cent.

Moreover, following the budget response, former Liberal senator Hollie Hughes, and former Liberal Party vice president Teena McQueen defected to One Nation in a devastating loss for the Coalition.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson made media rounds following Taylor’s budget response, claiming that the Coalition had simply copied her party’s policies.

“It’s all One Nation’s policies,” Hanson said in regards to the plans proposed by the Coalition.

With the rise of One Nation, Angus Taylor’s budget response may be existential for the Coalition, and should it fail to win over voters, may further jeopardise its political standing ahead of the next election.

Image source: Matt Roberts, ABC News