Australia politics live: John Howard warns against limiting immigration; Barnaby Joyce says super plan will have a ‘minute’ inflationary effect

John Howard has warned Australian political parties against banning migration from particular countries, as debate over the country’s immigration settings continues.

The former prime minister made the comments in Canberra during an hour-long conversation with Rory Medcalf, a national security professor at the Australian National University. The event came ahead of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

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The mood is overwhelming that we have to try very hard to stop terrorism creeping in under the cover of immigration, and you can’t do it by just stopping immigration, and it’s very hard to do it by stopping categories of immigration.

Howard said Australia needed to work hard to prevent terrorism from entering under the cover of immigration. But he rejected the idea that the problem could be addressed simply by stopping immigration or by banning entire categories of migrants.

He also warned that a proposal to refuse migrants from any country with a reputation for terrorism could be far more restrictive than its supporters realized. The live blog separately reported Barnaby Joyce’s view that a superannuation plan would have only a “minute” inflationary effect.

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We won’t take migrants from any country that has got a reputation for terrorism.