Australia news LIVE: Taylor delivers budget reply, pledges ‘biggest migration cut in Australian history’, $22.5b in tax cuts; Government calls proposals ‘uncontested nonsense’

Six passengers who were on board the virus-struck cruise ship the MV Hondius will touch down in Perth today, where they will spend three weeks in a COVID-era quarantine facility.

The Bullsbrook Centre for National Resilience was completed in 2022, but has not been used since. It will house the four Australians, one permanent resident and one New Zealand national being brought home on the repatriation flight.

Critical care staff have been deployed from Darwin to the centre ready to receive the passengers.

All the passengers have tested negative to hantavirus, Health Minister Mark Butler said yesterday.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor upped the ante on his campaign against “mass migration” in his budget reply speech that sought to pitch bigger personal tax cuts than Labor and differentiate the Coalition from One Nation after its crushing loss in the Farrer byelection.

Taylor promised substantial migration cuts and claimed he would deport 75,000 people who overstay visas in another plank of his hardline immigration plan. He did not nominate a migration target, prompting taunts from Labor MPs watching the speech in parliament, and telling the ABC only that it would be below 200,000.

“This much I promise: the Coalition will deliver one of the biggest cuts to immigration in Australian history. Our immigration cut will complement our plan to lift immigration standards,” he said.

Taylor also announced that the Coalition would make Australian citizenship a condition of receiving welfare payments.

The opposition leader promised to peg the lowest two tax brackets to inflation from 2028, delivering $250 for an average taxpayer in the first year, then $1000 by year four. The plan would cost $22.5 billion over four years, the opposition said.

It’s not clear how the opposition will fund the tax cut, given Taylor confirmed he would aim to repeal Labor’s $100 billion tax hikes on investors and trust holders.

Good morning and welcome to our national news live blog for Friday, May 15. My name is Emily Kaine, and I’ll be helming our coverage this morning. Here’s what you need to know.

• Opposition Leader Angus Taylor delivered his budget reply speech to Parliament last night. He said he was ready to fight for the nation as he proposed the “biggest cuts to immigration in Australian history”.

• The Liberal leader offered a series of policy measures that he would implement should the Coalition be re-elected, including: tying migration to housing; indexing the lowest two tax brackets to inflation; boosting defence spending; and cutting social welfare benefits from non-citizens. The government has already panned the proposals as “uncosted nonsense”.

• In the first day of high-stakes talks between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Xi said the two countries stood to benefit from co-operation and should be “partners and not rivals”, before delivering a warning to Trump about Taiwan, which he described as the “most important issue” shaping the future of China-US ties.
• And a contest to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s leadership appears to be looming after a senior British cabinet minister quit the government to clear the way for a challenge against the leader after months of internal dissent and a catastrophic loss for the party in elections last week.