What was claimed
Only 1800 of 51,605 skilled migrant arrivals in 2022/23 were in the construction industry.
Our verdict
Misleading: The 51,605 figure refers to temporary visas granted that year, when more than 10,000 skilled visas were granted to construction industry workers.
AAP FACTCHECK - Pauline Hanson has mixed datasets for a misleading claim about migrants on skilled visas.
The One Nation leader has claimed on several occasions that of the 739,000 migrants who arrived in Australia in 2022/23, only 51,605 were skilled and just 1800 of those were in the construction industry.
The claim doesn't stand up to scrutiny because it mixes three datasets that aren't directly comparable.
The 739,000 figure refers to the total number of migrants arriving in Australia in 2022/23, including returning Australians.
The 51,605 figure refers to the number of temporary skilled visas granted in that year and is not a subset of the 739,000 figure.
The 1800 figure appears to refer to a subset of skilled visas granted to permanent migrants working in the construction sector.
It appears to be unrelated to the 51,605 figure.
The claim was made in a July 28 Instagram video in which Senator Hanson claimed 739,000 people were brought into Australia between 2022 and 2023, but only 51,605 “were actually skilled”.
"Of that 51,605, only 1800 were in the construction industry," Senator Hanson said (timestamp 36 seconds).
She made similar comments in a News24 interview on August 6 (timestamp three minutes 24 seconds) and in an SBS interview (16 minutes 40 seconds) in May.
Senator Hanson’s office did not respond when AAP FactCheck asked about the basis of her claims.
A total of 737,000 people - not 739,000 - arrived in Australia in the 2022/23 financial year, of whom 83,700 were on skilled visas.
This figure comprises 34,270 primary applicants - people who qualify for a skilled visa in their own right - and 50,370 secondary applicants, such as partners or dependent children who are granted a visa as members of a primary applicant’s family, the ABS confirmed to AAP FactCheck by email.
Data is not published on how many of the 34,270 primary applicants who arrived in Australia were skilled workers in the construction industry.
The 51,605 figure cited by Senator Hanson refers to the number of primary applicants who were granted temporary skilled visas in 2022/23 (page 16).
It is a visa-grant figure, rather than the number of migrants who arrived in Australia on a skilled visa during that financial year.
Many in this cohort were already in Australia when the visa was granted.
In addition to the 51,605 temporary skilled visas, a further 68,922 permanent skilled visas were granted to primary applicants in 2022/23.
Taken together, 120,527 skilled visas were granted to primary applicants during the financial year.
It's not clear what the 1800 figure is based on.
Senator Hanson previously made a similar claim about the number of permanent visas granted to what she's called "core construction trades" in 2023/24.
She put the figure at 1428.
This is based on permanent visas granted to a selection of occupations the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) categorises as construction trades workers, as well as several types of electricians.
These figures were provided to One Nation Senator Tyron Whitten in response to a request to the Department of Home Affairs in October 2025.
However, Home Affairs responded that this missed thousands of skilled visas granted to construction industry workers, including construction managers, labourers, architects, civil engineers and crane operators.
It said the total number of temporary and permanent visas granted to those in construction occupations was 11,349 that year (page 4).
Using the same occupation categories provided to Senator Whitten, 1626 permanent skilled visas were granted in 2022/23, plus an additional 1967 temporary visas, according to Home Affairs data.
When including all occupations categorised as construction trades workers, including floor finishers, roof, floor and wall tilers, another category of general plumbers, along with Senator Whitten's selection of electricians, the total is 1762 permanent and 2224 temporary visas.
However, when using the occupations Home Affairs classifies as construction industry workers, the total is 10,589, the government confirmed to AAP FactCheck in an email.
Trivess Moore, a construction expert at RMIT University, said the government’s wider definition of construction-sector occupations was reasonable.
“The construction sector does involve everything from design to construction, which is covered in that list,” Dr Moore told AAP FactCheck.
Emma Baker, director of the Australian Centre for Housing Research at Adelaide University, described the broader classification as “pretty good” but said it was difficult to capture everyone involved in construction.
For example, she said the list may include some mining workers who are not in construction but also exclude some electricians, building inspectors and engineers.
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