Federal ministers expected to cop a fair bit of blowback over the changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax in the May Budget.

What they didn’t expect was the relentless hurricane of hostility they are still weathering.

It is a salient lesson in the importance of ensuring the fine detail of reforms are absolutely watertight before announcing them.

Good budgets sink in the media cycle within a week.

An absence of controversy is the best measure of success.

Thirteen weeks after this latest Budget was handed down it is still stubbornly refusing to be flushed.

Most of the so-called “unintended consequences” of the capital gains tax changes could and absolutely should have been identified in the framing of the reforms.

That they weren’t is nothing short of gob-smacking.

The Government is now paying the price for not doing its homework before submitting the assignment.

And it is paying it on the most important area of public policy: the economy.

It stands to reason, then, that when the Government’s next phase of immigration reforms was presented to Cabinet on Monday, ministers greeted them with a heightened sense of caution.

Like tax reform, immigration is a politically explosive space that governments enter at their peril.

Ministers decided to delay this week’s planned announcement so more work could be done on the detail.

This time, they wanted to be absolutely certain that all possible areas of contention had been thoroughly stress-tested and strategised before their release.

It was the right decision.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke attracted some controversy for cancelling his National Press Club address, scheduled for Thursday, in which he was expected to lay out the Government’s complete plan.

But that controversy was nothing compared with the firestorm the Government would have faced if it had released the changes while they were still half-baked.

The evidence of where that leads is still fresh in ministers’ minds.

The Government’s central objective is to drive down the net overseas migration figure, or the NOM, without depriving the economy of the essential skilled and care industry labour it desperately needs.

The NOM peaked at 556,000 in the post-COVID migration correction of 2023.

It fell to 309,000 last financial year, is projected to drop further to 245,000 this financial year and to hit the eventual target of 225,000 in 2027/28.

The Coalition hasn’t nominated a figure in its alternative policy of linking the migration intake to housing construction but says it will be somewhere below 200,000.

One Nation has promised to slash the number of permanent and temporary visas issued each year to 130,000.

But there is a problem with that. A large one.

The number of visas issued is only part of the story. The NOM also includes the number of Australian citizens returning to the country after 12 months away, minus the number of those leaving for the same period.

That number is currently tracking at between 90,000 and 100,000 people a year.

These are people who do not require visas. Add them to the 130,000 visa-holders One Nation says it will allow in and the NOM rises to as much as 230,000 a year — above the targets set by both Labor and the Coalition.

All that reinforces the long-term reality that there is no simple solution to the complex problem of controlling migration numbers.

Labor’s plan is based on re-prioritising applicants so more who are already here are considered for permanent skilled places and more who are offshore are considered for family reunion visas.

That would cut the NOM by converting short-term visa holders already in the numbers to permanent skilled residency and stopping people entering on tourist visas and then applying for family visas onshore.

It is a fine balance.

And the Government must get it right.

But it will create controversy. The objective is to limit the flashpoints in a way that wasn’t done on negative gearing and capital gains tax.

Like the economy, immigration is a vote-changer. Stuffing this up could make the budget blowback look like a Sunday picnic.

Mark Riley is the Seven Network’s political editor