The government’s migration policy prioritises knee-jerk politics over careful planning
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced the government’s long-awaited migration policy yesterday. It’s been a week dominated by the topic, with One Nation unveiling its policy on Monday, too.
The government’s proposed settings appear to be knee-jerk reactions to reducing net overseas migration (often referred to as NOM), rather than being based on careful modelling of labour demand and migration impacts on infrastructure.
Falling short of expectations
There was a strong expectation Burke would set out a concerted approach to lowering the 400,000-odd people on bridging visas, especially those awaiting the outcome of an appeal to the Administrative Review Tribunal following rejection of an application for a student or asylum visa.
Their chances of success on appeal to the tribunal are minimal but, because of the huge numbers, it takes a long time for cases to be heard. During that wait time, the person is issued a bridging visa, which enables them to work.
It was also expected the government would propose restricting the capacity of these people to work, and to examine ways to limit their capacity to appeal, thus encouraging them to leave.
This wouldn’t have been controversial because it has been an issue for a decade. All political parties are in favour of doing this.
But apparently this did not happen because Burke had not reached agreement with the Coalition on migration policy changes.
Instead, he’s proposed a return to 2015, when people whose options had run out went into detention centres and dutifully left the country in a few weeks.
Today, however, the numbers involved are vastly greater, far exceeding any capacity for detention centres to house them or the department’s capacity to find them.
Withdrawing work rights is the obvious policy direction. But this would have to be matched by severe penalties on Australian employers if they hire a person without work rights illegally.
The 2015 approach will do little. This is important because the data show that the low number of departures, not a high number of arrivals, is why the net overseas migration rate hasn’t fallen more quickly.
Punishing partners
The failure of people who don’t leave the country when they should also undermines the integrity of the migration system. But instead of addressing the pressing issue of departures, Burke focused on even more measures to reduce arrivals.
The unseemliest of these measures is to prevent partners and children of Australian citizens from coming to Australia on a visitor visa and then applying for permanent residence. Instead, partners will only be allowed to have short visits with their spouses before leaving again.
The net outcome of this arrangement is that the Australian citizen will eventually leave Australia so they can live in a full-time relationship with the person they love from another country – not one of occasional visits.
By contrast, for new permanent skilled migrants coming to Australia from overseas, their spouses can join them immediately.
It is also not clear what will happen if a relationship is formed in Australia. Will the partner be required to leave?
Changes, but with how much impact?
A second measure geared towards limiting arrivals is to not allow students to bring “secondary applicants” with them, that is, their spouses and children.
According to Department of Home Affairs statistics in 2025–26, 39,400 grants were made to secondary applicants on student visas (excluding those studying for a PhD). About a quarter of those were for children aged under 15 and most of the rest were partners.
Interestingly, 58% of secondary applicants were men. The primary student visa holder was a woman in the majority of cases. Nearly half (46%) were from South Asian countries, while just 4% of grantees were Chinese.
At the 2021 census, 57% of adults in the secondary student category had a university degree and 78% were employed
The impact of this restriction on net overseas migration will be limited in the short term as, in 2025–26, 54% of the grantees were already in Australia. In 2025, net overseas migration for people in this category was only 12,400.
It seems the restriction on secondary applicants will also apply to those on graduate visas. This will probably reduce applications for this type of visa, as grantees would be facing many years of being without their partners.
The government has also proposed a ballot for second- and third-year grants of working holiday visas.
This could have a powerful effect because a backpacker facing three months of farm or mining work in a regional area just to qualify for the ballot may decide the risk is too great. Farmers are already concerned about the loss of backpackers from work in the horticultural industry. This may add to their anxiety.
Still no plan
It seems the government has prioritised shrinking net overseas migration at the expense of the comprehensive planning that experts, including myself, have long been calling for.
Many of the people in the affected categories are now working in jobs that are important to the economy and society.
For example, as the demand for aged care has expanded sharply since COVID, many migrants have become carers. They were available and willing to do this work.
The demand for aged care workers is about to explode as the baby boomer generation turns 80. Withdrawing workers from the sector will be problematic.
Certain skilled trades in the construction industry could also be affected. The government’s proposed juggling of permanent skilled visa grants will only touch the surface of this demand.
It also misses the central issue for Australian migration policy: the management of the temporary population.
Other countries face similar challenges. Canada has recently accepted that temporary migrants will make up 5% of the total population of the country. In other words, it has accepted the inevitability of an ongoing, mainly growing, temporary population, and is planning accordingly.
Planning for temporary migrants (numbers, labour force involvement, infrastructure implications, rights and responsibilities) did not feature in Burke’s speech at all. This doesn’t bode well for managing migration in the future.
Read more: Australia’s migration system lacks something crucial: a plan
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