A damaging and public spat inside federal cabinet over immigration policy is deepening after the Prime Minister publicly rebuked the Home Affairs Minister’s push to reduce Australia’s refugee intake, sparking fresh tensions among senior government figures.
Labor MPs are increasingly frustrated at the delayed unveiling of plans to reduce the number of overseas arrivals, while Anthony Albanese’s internal critics also claim he is muzzling the party’s powerful right-faction in his home state of New South Wales.
Home Affairs Minster Tony Burke was last month forced to postpone a speech to announce the government’s long-awaited migration overhaul and on Thursday the PM overruled him on a reported push to slash Australia’s humanitarian intake.
Senior figures aligned to the Prime Minister’s left faction, including Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Health Minister Mark Butler, hit back at suggestions on Friday that the government had backflipped, saying the annual refugee intake would remain at 20,000.
“This is not a backflip. This is a restatement of a position,” Mr Butler insisted during an appearance on Seven’s Sunrise program.
“I think we should all take the word of the Prime Minister for the position of the Government. We’ve had for many years a humanitarian intake number of 20,000. We only reaffirmed it at our national conference last month in Adelaide.”
Senator Wong also argued the Government’s humanitarian position had not changed, and she would not be drawn on suggestions of friction inside cabinet over the contentious policy.
“I think the government’s position hasn’t changed. It was the same allocation the day before yesterday, yesterday and today,” the Foreign Minister told News24.
“I think everybody understands there’s a lot of work to do when it comes to resetting migration arrangements. Tony’s done a lot of work on that, and he’s spoken about some of those issues . . . The Government will make a decision on a range of those matters.”
Budget projections unveiled in May confirm the Government is aiming to reduce net overseas migration to 225,000 in 2027-28, although the details of how this will be achieved are still being debated inside Cabinet.
On Thursday morning, Mr Albanese pushed back at reports in the Australian Financial Review that his Government was slashing the annual refugee quota next financial year from 20,000 to 13,750, to help reach the target and in response to One Nation’s rise.
Following growing unrest inside sections of Labor’s caucus and from refugee groups throughout Thursday, Mr Albanese eventually intervened late in the day to publicly rebuke the apparent policy push by his Home Affairs Minister.
“The refugee intake needs to be renewed in the coming budget as the 20,000 places was available for four years,” the Prime Minister told the ABC late on Thursday afternoon.
“This intake number remains Government policy and will be continued in future years, consistent with Australia’s humanitarian commitments and sits beside our strong border security measures.”
On Friday Industry Minister Tim Ayers, one of the Prime Minister’s close confidantes and a fellow left-faction member, insisted that Mr Albanese “moved very fast to set out what the approach is and has been consistent all the way through”.
“The Prime Minister, at the first opportunity, has corrected that by saying, this is what the settled approach is to this issue. Fair enough, people are interested in that kind of dissonance there,” Senator Ayres told News24.
Internal recriminations over the messy policy split however continued on Friday, with Labor figures privately criticising both the Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister over their handling of the sensitive policy.
Critics of Minister Burke claimed nobody had done more in the past fortnight to promote Pauline Hanson and her agenda, by ensuring the immigration debate remained prominent in the “worst possible way” for the Government.
Others in the Government also privately mocked the Prime Minister’s claim to run a “cabinet government” pointing out he had this week publicly overruled his Home Affairs Minister on immigration and his Energy Minister Chris Bowen over data centre policy.
This week’s meeting of state and territory leaders with the Prime Minister agreed on national standards requiring data centres to invest in new renewable energy to offset their power demand but included flexibility for jurisdictions with government-owned electricity assets.
Amid claims he had been “rolled” by the Prime Minister after the inclusion of possible exemptions, Minister Bowen insisted the new framework did not include carve-outs for Queensland and the Northern Territory to exclusively use coal and gas.
“We’ll be legislating national standards for AI data centres. They’ll be in Commonwealth legislation, which will put to the Commonwealth Parliament, it will cover every state and territory, without exceptions,” Mr Bowen said.
“The only change is that if a state-owned energy company feels that they can power a data centre cheaper than with renewables, they can make that claim to the Federal Government.”
Mr Burke declined to comment on Friday when approached by The Nightly about the continuing uncertainty over when he would finally release details of the Government’s immigration overhaul.
Both Minister Burke and Minister Bowen are from Labor’s traditionally powerful New South Wales right faction, which party insiders say Mr Albanese has relished fighting against throughout his parliamentary career.
They point to the Prime Minister’s successful efforts before last year’s election to have fellow left faction member Ash Ambihaipahar preselected for the safe federal Labor seat of Barton in Sydney, which has traditionally been claimed by the NSW Right.
Some party insiders claim that Mr Burke is also increasingly frustrated at the political rise of his cabinet colleague Mark Butler and is worried that the Prime Minister is trying to make sure another left-faction member can eventually take over as leader.
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