Pauline Hanson has been sensationally cut off in the Senate during her own response to Angus Taylor’s budget reply, after the Opposition Leader unveiled major tax plans and a cap on net overseas migration.
Mr Taylor addressed the House of Representatives shortly after 7.30pm on Thursday for the customary budget reply.
It comes as Labor seeks to massively overhaul housing investor tax benefits through reform to capital gains tax and negative gearing – which the Coalition has already pledged to repeal – and shore up Australia’s defence and fuel security needs in a budget heavily influenced by global shocks from the war in the Middle East.
Anthony Albanese said the tax reform was needed to make Australia’s housing market more equitable.
However, in his speech, Mr Taylor instead vowed to cap immigration levels at the number of homes constructed each year.
“Never again will a government be able to bring in more people than our housing can support. That’s our commitment,” Mr Taylor said.
To allow the market to catch up, immigration would be set “significantly below” the cap for the first few years of a future Coalition government, Mr Taylor said, promptly laughter from Labor MPs.
“Only closer to the next election can we provide a precise immigration number. It would be rash to do so now,” he said, adding that Labor “always exceeds its immigration targets”.
Mr Taylor promised the Coalition would “deliver one of the biggest cuts to immigration in Australian history”.
The Coalition will also make the existing Australian Values Statement an “enforceable visa condition”, make it an obligation for permanent visa holders to learn English, and enhance border screening to “stop radicals”.
“We will curtail frivolous protection claims by restoring Temporary Protection Visas and establishing a list of safe countries deemed free from persecution,” he said.
“And, we will process and deport 70,000 overstayers who have no legal right to stay.
“Those who criticise the law being enforced must explain why their sympathies lie with illegal overstayers instead of with migrants and Australians who abide by the law.”
‘Stealth raid’
Mr Taylor vowed to get “stalled housing projects moving” and invest $5bn in supporting infrastructure, including roads, water, and sewage.
“With such infrastructure supported, we will unlock 400,000 new homes … we will cut red tape which will take up to $70,000 off the cost of a new home,” he said.
Mr Taylor claimed the new taxes on housing and on small businesses were “an assault on aspiration”.
“This is a stealth raid on Australians working hard to get ahead,” he said.
From 2028-29, the bottom two tax thresholds would be indexed to inflation under the Coalition’s Tax Back Guarantee, Mr Taylor said.
“That will fully protect 85 per cent of income earners, with relief of around $250 in year one, growing to more than $1000 a year in year four,” he said.
“From 2031-32, we will index the top two thresholds as well. That will fully protect all taxpayers from inflation.”
Mr Taylor said the measure was “generational tax reform”.
Earlier, Mr Taylor said access to the NDIS and 17 other welfare benefits would be restricted to Australian citizens, excluding permanent residents.
“My message is this: If you commit to Australia, then Australia will commit to you,” he said.
“After all, the taxes paid by hard working Australians should support Australians.”
‘Always a long queue of people’
Mr Taylor was grilled on the ABC’s7.30 on Thursday on the Coalition’s immigration policy.
He defended restricting welfare payments to Australian citizens only, after being asked by host Sarah Ferguson whether migrants from countries such as China or India would have to have to renounce assets in order to become an Australian citizen.
“We’re not (asking) anyone to give up anything. We’re saying if you want access to the privileges which we believe should be privileges of citizenship, you need to become a citizen,” he said.
“I welcome those communities who come to this country and want to build businesses and build careers and do things in our country and becomes Australians.”
Mr Taylor further rebuffed suggestions that he would further penalise diasporic communities with the Coalition’s measures.
“There’s always a long queue of people wanting to come to this country,” he said.
But people come to this country in order to receive welfare in the first couple of years of being here, perhaps that’s not an appropriate circumstance.
He added Labor’s plans for housing would be hampered under the current net migration levels.
“This is complete nonsense you hear from this government,” he said.
“There is no way in this country that houses could support that number.”
“Labor has failed so miserably on their housing targets and been so far above their immigration targets that we’ve got to get catch up.
Pauline’s reply cut short
Warning of a rise in costs and an increase in business insolvencies, One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson rallied against “bracket creep” and Labor’s Working Australians Tax Offset, which was included in the 2026-27 budget.
She said “real intergenerational quality” meant “giving young Australians the same opportunities their parents had”.
“The chance to own a home, raise a family, start a business and get ahead through hard work,” she said.
“Young people are not struggling because older generations succeeded. They are falling behind because governments have chosen subsidies and wealth redistribution over allowing free enterprise to flourish.”
Senator Hanson said One Nation would take a different approach to Labor.
“We will slash the GST to zero on building materials for homes up to a value of $1m for the next five years,” she said.
“Rapid population growth without matching supply is a recipe for declining living standards.
“This is not about blaming migrants. It’s about recognising limits.
“But, this government has no interest in reducing migration at all.”
Senator Hanson said One Nation would exempt insurance from GST, and urged the states and territories “to drop stamp duty on it as well”.
She also indicated that next week One Nation would introduce a “bold new gas policy that underwrites our vast sovereign resource assets for decades to come”.
“We have listened extensively and will work with industry, not against it, in genuine partnership,” she said.
“We will bring back our mining and resources industries, the bedrock that funds schools, hospitals, and roads.
“A strong nation leverages its natural advantages. It does not demonise them.
“One Nation will swiftly move to get rid of impediments in an increasingly competitive global environment and restore our status as a nation that rolls out the red carpet and resources rather than roll it up.”
Senator Hanson said her plan would require completion of the Inland Rail Project, abandoned by Labor, and “ban the further selling off of controlling interest in freehold farmland to foreign investors and limit the sale of leasehold farmland to a maximum of 25 years”.
“We’ll ban foreign ownership of water and return balance to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan,” she said.
In closing, Senator Hanson said “Australia stands at a crossroads”.
“For too long, Labor’s failed experiment of reckless spending, crippling regulation, net zero ideology and wealth redistribution has driven businesses to the wall,” she said.
“A nation loses hope when it loses vision.”
Senator Hanson was interrupted after running out of time to finish delivering her speech.
She was not granted to leave to continue and the Senate was adjourned.
Cheers for tax reform
There were few big surprises in Mr Taylor’s address.
It touched on the Coalition’s longstanding talking points: mass migration, big government and bid spending, and cost of living soaring while an “Australian where a single income earner has enough for a home deposit” became more and more unattainable.
Mr Taylor vowed to fight Labor’s housing investor taxes and, if they failed, to repeal them, to cheers from their side of the chamber and soft laughter from their opponents.
Labor MPs again scoffed when Mr Taylor said “something that’s been missing for too long (was) honesty”.
The grumbling continued as Mr Taylor claimed “mass migration is changing Australia for the worse”.
Mr Taylor said his ambition for the country was “to revive the freedom that Australians have lost under Labor”
“Not a government-directed economy – a free-enterprise economy,” he said.
“Not bigger government – better government.”
He did, however, commit to work with the Albanese government to wrangle the NDIS.
The same could not be said for “tax breaks for electric vehicles”.
“Which are overwhelmingly going to high-income Australians,” he said.
Asset write-offs and national security
Vowing to deliver a “fairer, freer, and better Australia for all”, Mr Taylor said a future Coalition government would bank 80c of every dollar of resources revenue when revenues are higher than forecast into a Future Generations Fund.
“This fund will help pay down Labor’s trillion dollars of debt, and it will help to invest in nation-building infrastructure,” he said.
Twenty-five per cent for the funding would be for regions “neglected by Labor”, Mr Taylor said.
Businesses with a turnover of less than $10m would also be able to immediately deduct assets of up to $50,000 on a permanent basis under the plan.
Mr Taylor also vowed to take a razor blade to regulation, including the National Construction Code and the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
He lamented that the construction code was “more than 2000 pages” under Labor.
“The code’s thousands of rules add tens-of-thousands of dollars to new housing builds,” he said.
“We want the code closer to 200 pages.”
In a world of “coercion, crisis, and conflict”, Australia also needed to “get serious about our self-reliance”, Mr Taylor said.
He said a Coalition government would develop a National Security Strategy and appoint a National Security Adviser.
“Central to that strategy will be defence,” he said.
“Unlike Labor with its accounting trickery, the Coalition will commit to spending at least three per cent of GDP on defence.”
Labor has pledged to massively ramp up defence spending with an additional $53bn over the next decade.
It is projected to reach three per cent of GDP by 2033.
Nationals’ reply
In his own budget reply shortly after, Nationals Leader Matt Canavan said Labor had “flown the white flag” on higher prices and lower wages.
“Look, I’m from Queensland and we know how to come back, and I will never give up. I will never give up on this country,” he said.
Senator Canavan said Labor had spent “a lot of time talking about intergenerational equity that hasn’t been delivered”.
“I’ll tell you what has been delivered. What has been delivered is geographically inequity,” he said.
“Have the fair go for regional Australia has been obliterated in this budget.”
He continued: “Labor continues to demonstrate that they sell out regional Australia.”
Senator Canavan said the Coalition’s energy plan, which has promised to back in non-renewable energy, would be cheaper than Labor’s.
“We should not ban any energy source,” he said.
“We should use our coal, downcast hydro, our nuclear, and renewables. They all have a role to play.”
He also noted the Albanese government’s decision to abandon the Inland Rail Project.
Pauline claims copycat
One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson earlier Angus Taylor’s budget reply is “replete with One Nation policies”.
“While they’ve been telling everyone that One Nation has no policies, they’ve been reading them very carefully because they’re desperate for some good ideas,” she said in a statement.
“I’m pleased they’ve seen some light at last.”
Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson earlier denied it was political risky for the Liberal Party to target migrants.
“I don’t think so at all,” he told the ABC.
“As a principal, it is whether the access of these programs are therefore Australian citizens.”
Mr Wilson said many European countries were “heading in a similar trajectory”.
“Increasingly, a lot of countries are saying that if they want to continue to support people to come in, to be building the future of the country, it has to be on the basis of they come, commit and contribute,” he said.
Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson dismissed concerns about permanent residents.
“there are a whole range of welfare programs that will only go to Australian citizens and that is right and proper,” she told Sky News.
“But, we won’t be conferring the rights of citizenship on non-citizens.
“It’s a really important principle and we are really proud of our stand.”
Senator Henderson could not say how much the initiative would save taxpayers.
