Migration changes to hit students’ families and working holiday makers

The Albanese government will stop the entry of students’ family members, attack “visa hopping”, and drastically cut the numbers of those on long-term working holidays under migration policy changes announced by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.

The government has redone the points test for skilled workers to give priority to key sectors, including health care, construction, education, law enforcement, defence, resources, agriculture, aquaculture and fishing.

The long-awaited overhaul of the migration system comes as figures released on Thursday showed Net Overseas Migration (NOM) for the year to March coming down to 292,100, which is better than the budget forecast of 295,000 for 2025-26.

The government is committed to bringing the NOM to 225,000 by 2027-28. The changes are seeking to meet this target, not aiming at a lower one.

Burke, delivering a speech covering “who arrives, who stays, who leaves” at the National Press Club, said he wanted to clamp down on spurious protection claims but this would require legislation. However, attempts to get opposition support for legislation had failed. He hoped the opposition would come back to the table.

In general, international students will no longer be allowed to bring family members with them, although there will be some exceptions, including for people from Pacific and ASEAN countries and for those on PhD courses.

The Working Holiday Maker Program will have a ballot system for years two and three. Year two will have a limit of 45,000 (down from last year’s 57,000); for year three, it will be 5,000 (down from 31,000).

There will be a “no further stay” condition applied to visitor visas to prevent people hopping to bridging visas.

Students will not be able to “hop down” to lower-level courses to prolong their stays.

There will be a crackdown on “rogue” migration agents.

A tougher approach will be taken to overstayers, with more use of detention to ensure there are consequences. There will be 100 more compliance officers and 250 extra beds to beef up the effort to remove overstayers.

Burke said this was only going back to the approach in place before 2015. He stressed this was not like the approach taken in some other countries, leaving unspecified the obvious example of the United States. But he anticipated he would come under fire for the measure.

Burke summed up his message:

If you want to come on a temporary basis to Australia, apply for a temporary visa. If you want to come to Australia permanently, apply for a permanent visa. And if you no longer have a valid visa, you should leave Australia.

Challenged by the opposition in parliament later about not going further to cut numbers, Burke said: “If you make cuts too deep, too hard in the immigration system, you trash the Australian economy”.