The Liberal Party’s leadership’s claims that half a million migrants have entered the country each year under Labor are misleading, experts say. 

While net overseas migration – the number of migrants arriving minus those departing – was 555,800 in 2022-23, it has fallen in the years since.

The latest data shows net overseas migration (NOM) was 305,570 in the year to June 2025.

Experts say the 2022-23 spike was a rebound following the pandemic, partly driven by changes to visa regulations under the then Coalition government.

The Coalition referenced the 2022-23 figure on numerous occasions during last year’s election campaign, when similar migration claims we debunked.

Immigration has gained a renewed focus following Angus Taylor’s appointment as Liberal leader and his budget reply speech last week.

New deputy leader Jane Hume has claimed that half a million people have come to the country a year under Labor, while Taylor has also referenced the 500,000 figure.

Hume told the ABC’s Insiders program on February 15 that immigration had “run out of control” under Labor.

“We can safely say that over the last few years, we’ve seen our immigration poorly managed,” she said.

“Around half a million people coming to the country per year has put pressure on our services, pressure on our health system, pressure on our infrastructure, on our roads, and certainly pressure on housing as well.”

Hume separately told Sky News on February 16 that “half a million people coming into this country on an annual basis” had put pressure on infrastructure.

She also told Sky News on February 19 that under Labor “we’ve seen over half a million people come to our country each year”.

Hume’s office didn’t respond to request for evidence.

Her references to “per year” and “each year” suggest her claim relates to migration rates over several years, but other senior Liberals appear to reference a single year in relation to the 500,000 figure.

Taylor, for example, claimed during an interview on the ABC’s 7.30 program on February 16 that migration rates had been “way too high” and specifically cited NOM. 

“This government allows the NOM – the net overseas migration – to get to over half a million and all they want to do is blame someone else,” he said.

It is unclear whether Hume is referring to NOM or just to arrivals data. 

The latest figures show there were 568,370 arrivals in the year to June 2025. That was down from a post-pandemic peak of 755,440 in the year to September 2023. 

The latest arrivals total is lower than the level under the Coalition government prior to the pandemic, when 607,870 arrived in the year to December 2019. 

However, experts say NOM is the meaningful measure of migration’s impact on infrastructure, health and housing, as it captures the net effect of people both entering and leaving the country.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows NOM did peak at 555,800 in the year to September 2023. However, in the same period the following year it fell to 364,820, and in the year to June 2025, the latest data, it fell further to 305,570.

Experts say the opposition’s claims omit these facts, as well as other key context about why rates rose so sharply after Covid restrictions were lifted to the peak in 2022-23.

For example, this peak followed a year of negative NOM while Covid restrictions were in place.

Alan Gamlen, a migration expert at the Australian National University, said when viewed across five years, the annual NOM averaged about 260,000 a year.

“The latest data also show NOM trending downward,” Gamlen said. 

“It’s therefore misleading to suggest a consistent annual inflow of half a million over the past five years.”

Fethi Mansouri, an expert in migration at Deakin University, said the claims are “erroneous”, based on the NOM data from the ABS. 

Former deputy secretary of the government’s immigration department Abul Rizvi also said Hume’s claim was contrary to the NOM data.

Additionally, he said the 2022-23 spike was partly due to policies before Labor came to government in May 2022.

Notably, they not only increased the number of arrivals, but also reduced the number of departures – contributing to a higher NOM figure.

In particular, Rizvi cited fee-free applications for student and working holiday makers introduced in early 2022; the special Covid visa introduced in 2020 that enabled temporary entrants to extend stays in Australia with full work rights – and an expansion of the working holiday maker scheme in 2022. 

He also said the introduction of unrestricted work rights for students in 2022 effectively made the student visa into an unsponsored work visa.

In a piece for the Independent Australia website, Rizvi said while there was an argument that Labor took too long to tighten the policies it inherited, “it was the Coalition that had stomped its foot on the immigration accelerator”.

As previously reported, the Albanese government also introduced policies to lift migration in 2022 amid political pressure from the Coalition and business groups to address labour shortages after the end of Covid border closures. 

“We do need an increase in the migration numbers,” then-Coalition leader Peter Dutton said in September 2022

“We’ll see what the government actually delivers because this can be many, many months, if not a couple of years in the pipeline.”

The Albanese government extended graduate visas and lifted the permanent migration intake in 2022-23.

-AAP