Taylor and Abbott say Bondi shooting drove the politics on migration

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor and ally Tony Abbott have linked the Coalition’s migration clampdown to the Bondi massacre, in the face of continued pressure to explain how the plan stacked up economically.

Labor pushed back on deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume’s claim that Labor had brought in “more advertisement executives than carpenters”, citing data showing that four times as many carpenters had arrived in the past four years.

After former bureaucrat Abul Rizvi cast doubt on Taylor’s 100,000 net migration target, Taylor spent Thursday defending the rigour of the policy and pledging an official set of costings by the next election.

A top labour economist told this masthead on Wednesday that cutting the growing number of temporary migrants could help turn around Australia’s productivity malaise by encouraging firms to innovate instead of relying on cheap labour.

On the cultural and political rationale, Abbott echoed One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce in saying the terror attack on December 14 last year lit the fuse for the current debate on migration.

“Because it was such a dismal milestone in our decline, for millions of Australians the Bondi massacre inspired a determination to retake control of our country,” Abbott said on Thursday.

In a veiled critique of One Nation, Abbott argued Taylor had not “just railed against excessive migrant numbers … but provided a considered, costed mechanism to bring numbers down.”

The former prime minister used his long-standing line on migrants joining “hotel Australia” rather than “team Australia” in a Substack article. Taylor used the same terms for the first time when announcing the policy two days ago, pointing to Abbott’s influence.

Similar democracies – from Canada to Scandinavia – have faced intense debates on migration and social values, prompting both right and centre-left parties to tighten controls.

Moderate Liberal MPs speaking anonymously told this masthead they were relieved that Taylor’s office did not pursue a proposal formulated in Sussan Ley’s dying days as opposition leader that would have blocked migration from “terror hotspots”, which could have been characterised by political opponents as a discriminatory, Trump-like Muslim ban.

But Taylor acknowledged that cultural as well as numerical considerations drove the policy, which he hopes will stem bleeding to One Nation and head off speculation about his leadership.

“It absolutely is both,” Taylor said on Andrew Bolt’s program on News24.

“We’ve seen people come to this country and get visas who should never have come to this country, and should never have been issued visas. One of them was one of the shooters at North Bondi just before Christmas last year.”

Australian-born Naveed Akram and his father, Sajid, a permanent resident who migrated from India in 1998, are accused of carrying out December’s Bondi Beach attack that claimed 15 innocent lives after being radicalised by Islamic State propaganda.

The younger Akram survived and is awaiting trial on murder and terrorism charges, while Sajid was shot and killed during the attack.

On the week of the third anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, Taylor added: “We do not want people coming to our country who do not share our values and Islamist extremists do not share our values.”

The Business Council of Australia and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry have opposed the Coalition’s plan, arguing it puts up arbitrary targets while exacerbating skills shortages.

The council, a traditional ally of the pro-business Coalition, called out the “race to the bottom” on migration, but senior Coalition MPs laughed off the complaints, saying business leaders had vacated the debate on migration over the past year just as it had on tax reform brawls, and that they had become addicted to cheap labour.

Labor ministers have not launched a full-frontal attack on Taylor’s plan – a sign the government knows it stands to gain little debating a hot-button issue where the populist right is setting the agenda. Instead, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has questioned the Coalition’s maths and said its plan would lead fewer skilled workers to migrate to Australia.

Taylor received a series of questions on Thursday about labour shortages in aged care, restaurants and cleaning firms.

“We should not build an economy or businesses on a guest worker foundation; that is not the way to do it,” he said, insisting the party will release costings by the election.

“That being said, it is true that there are many students, many students, both international and domestic, by the way, who work in aged care and the healthcare sector, and that’s a good thing.”

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