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Liberal MPs have warned their new leader, Angus Taylor, against lurching further to the right, and imposing “blanket bans” on immigration after a proposal was leaked to adopt hardline Trump-like policies to ban immigrants from specific regions under terrorist control – including Gaza and Lebanon.
Guardian Australia reported on Monday an immigration plan drafted under the former leader Sussan Ley, proposing to ban migrants from 37 regions of 13 countries where listed terrorist organisations have territorial control.
The regions are within Afghanistan, Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Palestine, the Philippines, Somalia and Yemen.
Conservative Liberal senator Leah Blyth said the party should be “very careful” to avoid generalisations, saying “not everyone from those regions is a terrorist”.
Blyth, who is of Burmese descent, used the example of Myanmar and said not all of its people should be banned from Australia even if it was under military rule.
“We don’t want terrorists or people that don’t like our way of life coming into Australia,” she said. “But we’ve got to be mindful of what generalisations mean, because a lot of innocent people are repressed under these regimes.
“Blanket bans may not stop bad actors, [they] simply redirect them … smart border security should be targeted, intelligence-led and focused on risk.”
Ley’s shadow immigration minister, Paul Scarr, who said he helped designed some parts of the proposal, disowned the country ban aspect on Monday, saying he “never agreed” to it. Scarr said he had “range of serious concerns” about the policy and he never signed off on it.
South Australian senator Andrew McLachlan said managing immigration levels was important but warned his party against copying One Nation on hardline anti-immigration rhetoric.
“Populist rhetoric adds nothing constructive to this discussion. We should always seek to attract the best and brightest people in the world who want to join us in building an amazing multicultural society. It does not matter what country they come from,” he said.
“The Liberal party must resist the calls by some in its ranks to hand over our policy development to One Nation. We have already done that with the s. More and more, we are pushing away the electors in the city.”
The proposal would also seek to remove as many as 100,000 asylum seekers and international students from Australia more quickly. Visa holders could have their rights to appeal immigration decisions restricted, and be blocked from consideration to move on to other visas.
Taylor, fresh from being elected the new opposition leader on Friday, has already indicated the Coalition will propose slashing immigration levels and introduce a new system to “shut the door” on people who do not believe in Australia’s core values, such as basic freedoms and democracy.
A potential move to ban immigration from specific regions comes after similar announcements by the US’s second Trump administration, which suspended visa processing for 75 countries in January and banned tourists from 12 countries last June.
One Liberal MP, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said while they were not against restricting migration from certain regions, tone would be crucial in selling the policy to the Australian community.
“We don’t want to get caught in culture wars, caught in pitting communities against each other, if we go down that path we’re really going to struggle,” they said.
“If you don’t get the tone right … we risk people thinking that our intentions behind our migration policies are racist.”
Another Liberal said some within the party were agitating for a policy more aligned with the Trump administration.
“I think there’s pressure for people within the party to go to that Donald Trump, ‘we’re not going to accept people from Muslim countries’ route,” the Liberal said.
“Do I think the Liberal party will go there? No, I don’t.”
However, they did raise concerns that Taylor could be influenced by Liberal elders of the right, including Tony Abbott, who on Friday told the ABC he wanted to see immigration policies return to how they were between the 1950s and 1970s – the white Australia era.
Another senior moderate said they were “very concerned” that, under Taylor, the party would move to the right.
“The fact that we’ve now got a party that’s almost completely driven by people who are very socially conservative is a concern.”
A fourth Liberal, who also spoke under the condition of anonymity, warned that if the party took a hardline stance on immigration, the moderates would not survive.
“I don’t think they can beat One Nation on immigration. If you read into what [Jacinta] Price and [Andrew] Hastie say and go down this hardline immigration route, moderates won’t survive that.”
Under Taylor, the Liberals are hoping to claw back ground from One Nation, which has seen a surge in opinion polls since the federal election.
