Liberal senator breaks ranks to take aim at Angus Taylor’s ‘negative’ rhetoric on immigration

A Liberal senator has broken ranks to criticise Angus Taylor’s plan to bar non-citizens from accessing welfare, warning it will create “two types of members of the community” and is “not the Australian way”.

The outspoken backbencher Andrew McLachlan said migrants should not be blamed for economic problems including the housing crisis, and warned his party’s immigration rhetoric was alienating diaspora communities.

Taylor made immigration a centrepiece of his budget reply speech last week. He promised to dramatically reduce the temporary immigration intake by tying it to housing construction, and to restrict the national disability and insurance scheme and 17 types of welfare programs to Australian citizens only if the Coalition wins the next election.

That would bar migrants – including permanent residents – from jobseeker, the age pension, disability support, parenting payments and the NDIS, even if they paid tax.

The announcements caused unease among some Liberals MPs who now believe One Nation’s Pauline Hanson is dictating their party’s agenda.

Speaking on ABC’s RN Breakfast on Tuesday, McLachlan warned that Taylor’s citizen-only welfare policy risked creating a two-tiered society.

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“I have deep concerns coming from a multicultural community that we are going to create two types of members in the community going forward with this policy suite,” the South Australian senator said. “I’m not sure it leads to a healthy Australian community.

“If you’re both contributing to the wealth of the nation and [only] one is entitled to certain entitlements, you could have almost a form of a strata-ing of our society.

“I’m not sure that’s the Australian way, or what our communities want.”

McLachlan said the Coalition’s rhetoric was alienating migrant communities, who have abandoned the Liberal party in droves at the past two elections.

“I don’t think we should take a negative approach to migration. Certainly, it should be controlled, and we don’t want to invite people here without giving them a society that can accommodate them both economically and culturally, but we cannot continue to blame migrants for the problems of our economy.”