Coalition Unveils Australian Values Migration Plan, Angus Taylor Promises Tougher Vetting

(AUSTRALIA) — Australia’s federal Coalition launched the Australian Values Migration Plan on April 14, 2026, opening its first major immigration platform under Opposition Leader Angus Taylor with proposals to make adherence to “Australian values” an enforceable visa condition and to expand screening, deportation powers and protection visa restrictions.

Taylor and Shadow Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration Senator Jonno Duniam unveiled the policy as the Liberal and National parties sharpened their attack on Labor’s migration settings, arguing the current system has weakened public confidence and allowed abuses that should trigger faster refusals, visa cancellations and removals.

The package would convert the existing Australian Values Statement from what the Coalition called a “tick-box exercise” into a legally binding requirement for temporary and permanent visa holders. It would also require English language proficiency for all permanent visa holders and fold breaches of the values statement into the Character Test under the Migration Act 1958, exposing some visa holders to cancellation and deportation.

Taylor framed the shift as a break with Australia’s current approach. “Australia has a non-discriminatory immigration program. But for an immigration program to work in the national interest it must discriminate based on values. We must dispense with the naive thinking that has dominated our immigration policy for too long,” he said.

He also tied the proposal directly to visa enforcement. “In short, if a visa holder undermines our democratic values, doesn’t respect the law, or demonstrates they don’t respect our core values, they will be booted out of Australia,” Taylor said.

The announcement marked Taylor’s first major policy platform since taking the leadership and landed in a political contest in which the Coalition is trying to recover support on the right, including voters drawn to One Nation. Coalition figures have linked the plan to a broader argument that migration levels should fall and screening standards should rise.

That economic case featured heavily in the rollout. The Coalition argues that “Labor’s out-of-control migration,” which it put at 1.4 million people in 3.5 years, has added pressure to housing and lowered living standards, and it says the answer is to “lower the numbers and lift the standards.”

At the center of the plan are three policy pillars, each aimed at a different stage of the migration system: entry, status and enforcement. One is focused on values and integration, another on what the Coalition describes as system abuse, and the third on security screening for applicants and recent entrants.

Under the first pillar, the Coalition would make the values statement enforceable across both temporary and permanent visas. Breaches such as rejecting gender equality or the rule of law would be codified as grounds for failing the Character Test, a move that would shift values compliance from a declaration into a removal risk with direct legal effect under the migration system.

Andrew Wallace, Federal Member for Fisher, cast that element in blunt terms. “If you want to live here, you must respect our values, obey our laws, and contribute to our nation. If you don’t, you shouldn’t be here,” he said in a statement posted on his website.

The second pillar would create a “Safe Country List” to fast-track refusals of protection claims from nationals of countries Australia deems safe. It would also restore Temporary Protection Visas and Safe Haven Enterprise Visas for people arriving unlawfully, reviving categories that have long been central to Coalition border policy.

Another part of that enforcement agenda targets the non-citizen population already in Australia without lawful status. The Coalition said it would provide additional funding for authorities to identify and deport approximately 65,000 unlawful non-citizens who have exhausted legal avenues.

Duniam set out the message in stark political language. “The Coalition will pursue a values-based migration scheme that puts Australian values first, and shuts the door to those who hate our country or abuse our legal system. Living in Australia is a privilege, not a right,” he said.

The third pillar, branded “Red Light to Radicals,” would require mandatory social media screening for all visa applicants. The Coalition said the checks would be used to detect extremist views or alignment issues, adding a wider digital disclosure burden to future applications and pushing screening beyond documents, identity and criminal history.

It also proposed an Enhanced Screening Coordination Centre inside the Department of Home Affairs to integrate intelligence from ASIO, the AFP and the Australian Border Force. The model would centralize security review across agencies and give a future Coalition government a dedicated structure for intelligence-led screening decisions.

The plan singles out one recent intake for renewed review. It calls for a reassessment of the 1,700 individuals who arrived from Gaza following the 2023 conflict, placing those arrivals within the Coalition’s wider argument that visa decisions should be revisited where security or values concerns arise.

The shift described by the Coalition is not only administrative. Taylor’s language recasts migration selection around explicit judgments about social and democratic values, rather than the longstanding claim of a non-discriminatory program. In practice, that would widen the grounds on which conduct, beliefs or expressed views could affect a person’s right to enter or remain in Australia.

Applicants would face the most immediate changes. Mandatory disclosure for social media vetting and more rigorous English testing would raise the threshold at the application stage, while people from countries placed on a safe list could face faster refusal of protection claims with fewer opportunities to prolong a case.

Permanent residents would also face new exposure under the proposal because values-based breaches, if written into visa conditions and linked to the Character Test, could become grounds for deportation where they were not previously treated that way. The Coalition has paired that tougher line with broader restrictions on benefits, saying non-citizens would wait longer for access to social security.

Some government-backed home-buyer support would also shift under the plan. Permanent residents would be excluded from certain home-buyer deposit schemes reserved for citizens, another sign that the Coalition wants migration policy tied more tightly to citizenship status and to what it defines as contribution and compliance.

The policy launch came through statements from the Liberal Party of Australia, Wallace and The Nationals, presenting a coordinated front around a plan that blends border control, integration tests, social restrictions and expanded cancellation powers. It is an Opposition policy platform, not a measure now in force, but it lays down a clear line for the Coalition’s next fight over migration: fewer arrivals, harder screening and a system in which values are no longer aspirational language but a condition of staying.