Angus Taylor arrived at the three-corned migration battle this week with a plan aimed at the middle road between One Nation and the government.

Vowing to slash Australia's temporary workforce by 650,000 people over four years, the opposition leader was trying to land the twin objectives of bringing the fight to One Nation while also presenting an economically sound policy.

With a top line designed to grab headlines — "the largest cut to immigration in Australia's history" — the opposition has pledged deep cuts to graduate, refugee and bridging visas should Taylor get handed the keys to the Lodge.

The opposition is the last to join the migration debate. Labor released its own policy several weeks ago, forging ahead with changes to reduce the Net Overseas Migration figure to its Treasury forecasted cap of 225,000 people. One Nation got out of the blocks first, though, flagging a period of negative migration before its policy settles at 130,000 people per year.

The Coalition hit the middle: two years at 100,000 before rising to 160,000 in the fourth year.

That's a deeper cut than Peter Dutton proposed ahead of the last election. So far, Taylor has done a better job at selling the plan than his predecessor. Dutton's pitch was mired in confusion as he struggled to explain which visa categories would be targeted.

But time will tell if the Coalition's revamped policy stacks up. Business groups claimed the plan would harm economic growth, concerns dismissed by Taylor as being made by "vested interests". The aged care sector also raised the alarm.

"I think the problem is that whenever any party talks about immigration they use these sort of flashy headline numbers that … appeal hugely to people who want less immigration, terrify everybody who relies on immigration, and we get this sort of big swirling debate and we need to stop doing that," Aging Australia chief Tom Symondson told ABC's Radio National this morning.

The policy wasn't formally costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), despite senior figures insisting they worked closely with the independent watchdog. Taylor's office modelled the policy and asked the PBO to confirm if it was budget neutral.

The Australian Financial Review reported that Taylor's team had told MPs not to say the migration policy was officially costed. Of course, the PBO can't discuss what it's working on. It declined to comment when this newsletter asked on Wednesday.

It's a far cry from Shadow Home Affairs Minister Jonno Duniam's declaration last month that the Coalition would do the work One Nation failed to do.

He argued this morning that it would be done. Just not right now. That job will be completed closer to election day and by that time Duniam will be well out of the political fray, having confirmed he'll be exiting politics by the end of the year.

The shadow of One Nation looms large over the policy. Both the Coalition and One Nation have used the term "breathing space" to describe why Australia requires the cuts. The blueprint was also released just days before Taylor is scheduled to headline the Conservative Political Action Conference in Brisbane.

He's the first Liberal leader to attend. Flyers promoting CPAC placed the opposition leader in a trio alongside Pauline Hanson and Nationals leader Matt Canavan.

While the government largely stayed out of the migration debate this week, it was facing another storm over a decision to wind back surcharges.

A ban on additional card payment fees, announced earlier this year by the Reserve Bank, came into effect last week. The move was originally championed by Labor MP Jerome Laxale before the RBA even started looking at the issue.

The central bank expanded it beyond Laxale's original focus on debit cards, arguing the change was a win for consumers. As such, the government started selling it as a cost-of-living measure, with Anthony Albanese and other MPs taking to social media to herald the change.

But within days the sentiment began to shift — turbocharged by the Australian Tax Office's decision to jump on board and ban credit card payments on tax bills. That opened another can of worms.

The business backlash was fierce. The ATO refused to budge, despite holding a crisis meeting about the issue on Wednesday. It argued that only 2.3 per cent of payments to the ATO are via credit.

So far, the government has shown little interest in helping the ATO solve the problem. Labor may be a little relieved that it's the tax office that's become the focus of the story, rather than the additional 50 cents many people are paying for their coffee. At least for now.

So, where has the prime minister been this week? He's been off in Fiji and the low-lying atolls of Tuvalu where Australia had organised an international conference to highlight the impact of climate change on the Pacific.

Albanese made the promise way back when climate change was front of mind for the public and Australia's relationship with Pacific neighbours was lagging. The idea was to bring world leaders to the region to see what's going on for themselves.

But the years have chipped away at that promise. First, Australia wasn't able to secure the right to host the UN climate summit, known as COP, in its own right. Albanese and minister Chris Bowen had to settle for a precursor to the main event in Türkiye in November.

One by one, world leaders declined the invitation to come and, as time went on, the government had to accept that mostly ministers and other officials would visit Tuvalu.

In all, 36 people boarded the plane to Tuvalu. Mauritius's Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam and East Timor President José Ramos-Horta were the sole leaders from outside of the Pacific to attend.

Both Albanese and Bowen have defended the poor showing, arguing world leaders don't typically attend pre-COP, which is hardly the main event.

So, was it a flop? That was the question foreign affairs reporter Stephen Dziedzic tackled this morning — a recommended read if you have a spare moment this afternoon.

He argues that it's hard to say for certain just yet. We'll have to wait to see if there are concrete outcomes from COP31 held next month. But the gap between what the government hoped the event would be and what was delivered is hard to ignore.