Tony Abbott will call for a cut of 80,000 in Australia’s migration intake in a speech claiming the move would improve quality of living and suggesting the Coalition needs to champion political outsiders to win the next election.

The speech, to be delivered to the Sydney Institute on Tuesday, reportedly blasts the national energy guarantee and criticises Coalition ministers for not taking up the cause of cutting immigration.

On Monday Abbott seized on comments from the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, that the intake should be reviewed and will now call for a specific target of 110,000, down from the current levels of 190,000.



According to extracts of the speech in the Australian and the Daily Telegraph, the former prime minister will call for the substantial reduction “at least until infrastructure, housing stock and integration has better caught up”.

“It’s a basic law of economics that increasing the supply of ­labour depresses wages, and that increasing demand for housing boosts price,” Abbott says.

Labor’s shadow assistant treasurer, Andrew Leigh, says an OECD survey of academic studies found that migrants had minimal impact on housing prices and studies of the impact on wages had mixed results, with many showing migration had a positive effect.

Abbott champions the figure of 110,000 because it is the long-term average during the 11 years of the Howard government, although an analysis by the parliamentary library shows the figure is weighed down by low numbers in the early years and migration had risen to 160,000 by 2006-07.

He will say that despite concerns about housing affordability and wages “no one on the frontbench of government or ­opposition had been prepared to raise the one big contributing factor that is wholly and solely within the federal government’s control — until Peter Dutton ­finally said last week that immigration could be cut if it’s in our national interest”.

Since 2017 Abbott has suggested a reduction as part of a “conservative manifesto” to win back Coalition voters, including those who intend to vote for One Nation, whose leader, Pauline Hanson, advocates stopping migration.

“In order to win the next election, the government needs policy positions which are prin­cipled, practical and popular,” he will say. “And if they also outrage the Labor party, so much the better. Scaling back immigration acknowledges that government’s first duty is to its own citizens.”

The Daily Telegraph reported that Abbott will criticise the “glib talk” of politicians and, in a veiled criticism of the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, warn that “all too often … the people charged with sorting out our difficulties don’t have to suffer them”.

“It’s easy to be relaxed about green scheme-driven price hikes when you’re on a big salary,” he says. “It’s easy to dismiss street crime when you live in an upmarket suburb and don’t have to use public transport or drive long distances for work.

“Hence the insiders versus outsiders chasm now bedevilling the politics of the west: a talking class that’s never had it so good; a working class that’s trying harder and harder just to keep up; and a welfare class with a strong sense of entitlement.”

Abbott will reportedly criticise the national energy guarantee, claiming it sounds “wonderful” but lacks any explanation as to how it would bring down prices.

He will suggest something is “fundamentally wrong” when Australia has “the world’s highest energy prices” despite large reserves of coal, gas and uranium.

“Our emissions obsession has made coal taboo, so policy makers pretend that a combination of wind and gas generation can keep the lights on and prices down even though most states are making further gas production almost impossible,” he says.