Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Angus Taylor have held two meetings in a bid to find common ground on tightening parts of Australia’s migration system, as both major parties confront growing voter concern over immigration and political pressure from One Nation.

The discussions represent an unusual attempt by Labor and the Coalition to reach agreement on measures aimed at reducing abuse of temporary visas and bringing net overseas migration down from its post-pandemic highs.

But there is no migration pact yet.

Taylor indicated late in the week that substantial differences remained, saying the opposition was not getting what it had requested and that there was currently no position on which the parties could move forward together.

The talks therefore fall well short of the claim that Australia’s two major parties have already struck a secret or “uniparty” agreement to shut down One Nation.

What is clear is that Pauline Hanson’s resurgent party has changed the political environment in which both Albanese and Taylor are making migration policy.

One Nation has sought to make high immigration, housing pressure and population growth defining national issues, while support for both Labor and the Coalition has come under pressure.

That has given the major parties an incentive to show voters they are responding to problems within the migration system without necessarily adopting One Nation’s broader approach.

The government and opposition nevertheless start from substantially different positions.

Labor’s existing budget trajectory has net overseas migration falling to 225,000 in 2027-28.

The latest official population figures currently available from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show net overseas migration was about 301,000 in the year to December 2025, down from the extraordinary peaks recorded after Australia’s borders reopened following the pandemic.

The next quarterly population release, covering March 2026, is not due until September 17.

The Coalition wants migration reduced significantly further.

Taylor has argued for net overseas migration to fall below 170,000, putting a sizeable gap between the opposition’s preferred level and the government’s medium-term budget forecast even if agreement can be found on individual reforms.

The discussions this week have concentrated less on settling that headline number than on areas where both sides may be able to identify abuse or unintended pathways within the visa system.

One target is “visa-hopping” — the practice of moving from one temporary visa category to another in order to extend a person’s stay in Australia.

The government is also examining the use of student, working holiday and temporary worker visas, while seeking to prevent people from lodging weak protection claims primarily as a means of remaining in Australia for longer.

Those issues have become increasingly significant because net overseas migration is not simply determined by how many permanent migrants the government formally accepts each year.

NOM measures people entering Australia for at least 12 months, minus those leaving for at least 12 months, and therefore captures large numbers of students, temporary workers and other visa holders.

That distinction is often lost in political arguments in which the permanent migration program and total net migration are treated as if they were the same number.

Taylor has sent Albanese a broader list of Coalition demands that goes well beyond the areas where bipartisan agreement may be possible.

The opposition wants tougher measures aimed at preventing terrorist sympathisers from entering Australia and has proposed a United Kingdom-style “safe country” list to accelerate the rejection of protection applications it considers illegitimate.

Under that approach, claims from people arriving from countries deemed sufficiently safe could face a faster presumption against protection, although any Australian model would need to operate within domestic and international legal obligations.

The Coalition also wants to prevent welfare payments going to people who have been denied visas, impose tighter restrictions on visa-hopping and more closely bind international students to the educational institutions sponsoring them.

It has proposed limiting access to Temporary Graduate Visas to people whose qualifications correspond to occupations where Australia has the strongest skills shortages.

Some of those policies build on a broader migration platform Taylor outlined earlier this year.

That platform included tougher screening, a proposed safe-country framework, action against visa overstayers and greater emphasis on what the Coalition describes as Australian values and national security.

The Albanese government has not accepted that entire agenda.

Instead, the current negotiations appear to be testing whether there is a narrower package that can command support from both sides of parliament.

That would not be unprecedented.

Labor and the Coalition have recently reached bipartisan agreements in other contested policy areas, including gambling reform measures and arrangements governing bargaining between digital platforms and Australian media companies.

A migration deal, however, would carry considerably greater political risk.

Immigration has become one of the sharpest dividing lines in Australian politics as housing costs, rents, congestion and pressure on services collide with persistent shortages of skilled workers.

Voters concerned about population growth often see migration as an obvious contributor to demand for housing and infrastructure.

Business groups, universities, farmers and state governments, on the other hand, rely heavily on overseas workers and students and warn that blunt cuts can create new economic problems without solving housing shortages.

That tension was laid bare this week by South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas.

The Labor premier warned against what he called a “political race to the bottom” in which mainstream parties compete over who can promise the largest reduction in migration.

“This is madness,” he said.

Malinauskas argued that Australia’s economic challenges required the country to preserve a strong migration program, particularly where migrants fill occupations needed to build homes, provide healthcare and expand productive capacity.

He said the correct political response to anti-immigration populism was “not appeasement”.

His intervention exposed a significant tension within Labor itself.

The federal government is under pressure to demonstrate that migration is being brought under control, yet Labor premiers governing states with major infrastructure programs and acute labour shortages do not necessarily want Canberra to turn off the supply of workers they need.

Victorian and Western Australian leaders have made similar arguments about the importance of skilled migration to their economies.

The business sector has also warned against choosing migration targets primarily for political effect rather than assessing the types of workers Australia requires.

The debate is particularly complicated in housing.

Higher population growth adds to demand for accommodation in markets that have already struggled to build enough homes.

But some of the same industries required to increase housing supply — including construction — face worker shortages that migration can help fill.

A poorly designed cut can therefore reduce housing demand while simultaneously reducing the workforce available to build additional supply.

This is why the argument over migration cannot be reduced to a single annual number.

The composition of the intake, the skills migrants bring, where they settle, how quickly infrastructure is constructed and whether temporary visa programs are operating as intended can all matter as much as the headline figure.

Still, headline numbers dominate politics.

Australia’s post-pandemic migration surge was exceptionally large.

ABS data show net overseas migration peaked above 500,000 on a rolling annual basis during the reopening period before falling sharply. By the year ending December 2025, it was about 301,000.

The decline means claims that migration is continuing indefinitely at its record level are outdated.

But the current figure remains above the 225,000 level forecast by the government for 2027-28 and well above the Coalition’s preferred ceiling.

That gives both Albanese and Taylor a political reason to demonstrate further action.

One Nation is part of that calculation, but not the only part.

Housing affordability, public confidence in the visa system, international education integrity, protection claims and labour-market needs would remain substantial policy problems even if Hanson’s party were not rising in the polls.

The political threat from One Nation does, however, change the urgency.

The party has increasingly sought to portray Labor and the Coalition as a single political establishment unwilling to make substantial reductions to immigration.

Any bipartisan agreement will therefore be used by Hanson’s supporters as evidence for the “uniparty” argument.

From the perspective of the major parties, the same agreement could be presented very differently: as an attempt to remove some of the most contentious migration problems from partisan politics and pass reforms that both believe are necessary.

Those competing interpretations make transparency around any final package important.

A genuine bipartisan agreement would need to spell out which visa categories are changing, what legal tests are being altered, how many people the government expects the measures to affect and what consequences are expected for universities, employers and state economies.

It would also need to distinguish between reforms intended to combat abuse and broader decisions about how many migrants Australia should accept.

The latter question remains unresolved.

Taylor has made clear that even if the Coalition reaches agreement with Labor on measures such as visa-hopping, it will continue campaigning for lower overall migration and other policies the government rejects.

That means an agreement would not end the immigration debate or erase the policy divide between the two major parties.

Nor would it remove One Nation from the contest.

If anything, a Labor-Coalition deal could give Hanson another argument that only her party is willing to pursue more radical reductions.

Albanese and Taylor are therefore attempting a difficult political balance.

They need to convince Australians concerned about immigration that the system is being tightened, while reassuring employers, states and institutions dependent on skilled migration that the response will not damage the economy.

They must also decide whether cooperation is more useful than preserving a partisan point of difference.

For now, the answer remains uncertain.

The Prime Minister and Opposition Leader have talked twice. Potential areas of agreement have been identified. Taylor has submitted a detailed list of demands. But the opposition says it is not yet getting enough from the government to sign on.

That is a negotiation — not yet a deal.

And while One Nation’s rise is unmistakably part of the political pressure surrounding those discussions, Australia’s migration debate is bigger than a contest between three political parties.

The eventual test will be whether any reform actually produces a migration system that is harder to exploit, better matched to Australia’s skills and humanitarian needs, and capable of maintaining public confidence while population growth continues to slow.