Anthony Albanese’s government announces sweeping changes to migration: Who stays and who goes
International students will face tough new restrictions on bringing family members to Australia as Labor unveils a major crackdown on temporary migration and visa-hopping.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced the change at the National Press Club on Thursday as part of a broader overhaul of the migration system.
‘What we will be doing for international students – and I’ll go through the exceptions to this, because the exceptions are also important – for international students, we will no longer be allowing the attaching of family members for international students or for graduate Visas,’ he said.
The changes will not affect partners or family members who are already in Australia on an existing visa.
Backpackers will no longer automatically get a second or third working holiday visa, even if they complete the required regional work.
Backpackers seeking a second or third working holiday visa will instead have to enter a ballot.
The number of second-year visas will be capped at 45,000, compared with about 57,000 people who qualified last year.
Third-year visas will be cut much more sharply, with just 5,000 places available, down from about 31,000 last year.
‘Not everybody will get through because we need to have some control and certainty of what those numbers are.’
He is also tightening visitor visas.
At the moment, someone can come to Australia on a visitor visa, apply for another visa while here and then stay on a bridging visa while that application is processed.
Burke says this has encouraged visa-hopping and also made officials more reluctant to approve genuine visitor visas.
Under the new system, many visitor visas will have a ‘No further stay’ condition, meaning the person generally won’t be able to apply for another visa while in Australia and will have to leave when their visitor visa expires.
International students will be blocked from repeatedly switching courses at the same or lower qualification level under the crackdown.
‘You can go up the qualification scale, but only up the qualification scale,’ he said.
‘So, at the end of a bachelor degree, if you want to then do a master’s, that’s up the scale, that’s ok.’
Burke said the government was targeting cases where students finish one course and then move into cheaper or lower-level courses primarily to remain in Australia and work.
‘One of the classic areas of Visa hopping is people finish a course, hop to the next course, hop to the next,’ he said.
He said some students were moving to questionable education providers offering cheaper courses with limited attendance requirements.
‘Study with me. It will cost you less. We’re not very demanding on whether you attend anything. And you’ll be able to go for your life and get out there and work.’
The government is also planning a separate crackdown on what Burke described as disingenuous protection claims lodged by temporary migrants who have exhausted other visa options.
He said some applicants were being advised to lodge asylum claims despite having little prospect of success because the appeals process could allow them to remain and work in Australia for years.
‘Put one in anyway and you’ll be able to wait out the appeal system, wait out the court system, you might get up to nine years working in Australia.’
Migration agents could be deregistered if they encourage clients to lodge bogusclaims simply to prolong their stay in Australia, Burke said.
Burke wants to revive the pre-2015 approach to visa overstayers: identify people whose visas have expired, tell them to leave, and potentially detain them briefly if they refuse.
The government plans to add 100 compliance officers and 250 detention beds to enforce that.
‘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.’
It is looking at using existing facilities near airports and potentially the former Melbourne quarantine facility for additional detention capacity.
He said Australia was not experiencing a mass-migration problem.
‘There are parts of the world where mass migration is something that they are dealing with. It is not something we’re dealing with in Australia,’ he said.
‘There was a peak post-pandemic, which was too high. There are reasons why it was too high and reasons why, logically, there was always going to be a peak.’
Burke also defended immigration as critical to Australia’s economy, and said both regional areas and major cities depended heavily on overseas workers and international students.
‘It is true that immigration is critical to the economy of our regions. It is also true that immigration is critical to the economy of our cities as well,’ he said.
He said international education supported jobs well beyond universities, including cleaners, maintenance workers and businesses used by foreign students.
‘There’s a whole section of the economy in the cities that is only there because we have an important export industry in international students,’ Burke said.
‘Drastic cuts, wherever you make them, hurt the economy in every part, in every area.’
Burke said any attempt to lower migration needed to take account of the economic consequences.
He pointed to the construction industry as an example of Australia’s dependence on overseas-born workers.
‘We talk about the need for extra housing. It’s pretty hard to get a house built without having a plasterer involved,’ he said.
‘In both Sydney and Melbourne, close to two-thirds of the plasterers we have were born overseas.
‘We need immigration. We just need to make sure that it is targeted to Australia’s needs, both in terms of numbers and across the different categories that work for our economy.’
However, he said Australia has a problem with visa hopping, where some migrants move repeatedly between temporary visas despite having little prospect of qualifying for permanent residency.
‘There are individuals who would never, in fact, meet the qualifications to be able to become a permanent resident, and effectively jump from visa to visa, use the appeals process to be able to stay here as long as possible,’ he said.
‘It eventually becomes absurd not to just let them stay because, at that point, they have Australian-citizen children and, at that point, they are so integrated into a local community.’
He also claimed Australia’s housing shortage is not primarily the result of immigration, it is largely because Australians are living in smaller households.
‘Housing, and the housing shortage we have, is not caused by immigration.
‘Anyone who looks at the migration program and wants to somehow say it was their fault, no. Australians have made a decision about how many people they want per household.’
Follow the latest developments live.
Labor to introduce backpacker ballot system
The Albanese government will introduce a new ballot system for non-British backpackers seeking to stay in Australia beyond their first working holiday visa.
Burke said backpackers would still need to complete the required regional work to qualify for additional years, but eligibility would no longer guarantee approval.
‘To qualify for your second year, you have to do 88 days in the regions. To qualify for your third year, you have to do six months. That won’t change,’ Burke said.
‘What you will be qualifying for is a ballot, not everybody will get through because we need to have some control and certainty of what those numbers are.’
Under the changes, second-year working holiday visas will be capped at 45,000 places. Burke noted that 57,000 backpackers qualified for a second-year visa under the existing system last year.
The restrictions will be even tighter for third-year visas.
‘We will be seriously limiting year three down to a ballot system of 5,000,’ Burke said.
‘Last year, there were 31,000 in this group. That will only become 5,000 places.’
Burke said applicants would still be required to complete regional work before entering the ballot, ensuring the incentive for backpackers to work in regional Australia remains in place.
Crackdown on international student family visas
The Albanese government will introduce restrictions on international students bringing family members to Australia.
‘If you’re an Australian citizen, and your partner is not an Australian citizen and they live overseas, and you put in an application for them to come here, you have to wait quite some years,’ Tony Burke said.
‘At the moment, if you’re an international student and you want to come here with your partner, you get them right from the start.’
Under the changes, new international students and graduate visa holders will generally no longer be able to attach family members to their visas.
‘For international students, we will no longer be allowing the attaching of family members for international students or for graduate visas,’ Burke said.
The government has stressed the policy will not apply retrospectively.
‘Anyone who already has their family that are attached to a visa and is already here, we’re not going to be breaking up families onshore,’ Burke said.
Exceptions will remain for some groups, including students from Pacific and ASEAN countries, as well as certain higher-level courses such as PhDs.
Burke: British backpacker visas will take longer to process
Tony Burke said the Albanese government was monitoring an increase in British working holiday-makers, with the number of backpackers in Australia more than doubling in recent years.
Visa processing priorities will be changed, he said, with slower processing times for UK working holiday-maker applications introduced.
Burke said the increase followed the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement, signed in 2023, which removed regional work requirements for British backpackers seeking to extend their stay.
‘At the time that the free trade agreement was signed, the number of UK backpackers we had here in Australia was in the order of 17,000,’ Burke said.
He noted that, even before the pandemic, numbers typically peaked at around 35,000.
‘It’s now just shy of 80,000 in terms of the number of people here in Australia,’ Burke said.
The minister said the government would continue prioritising working holiday-maker applications from visa holders completing regional work, while UK applicants would remain subject to standard processing arrangements during discussions with Britain.
Immigration not to blame for the housing crisis, Burke says
The Home Affairs minister rejected claims migration is responsible for Australia’s housing crisis, arguing the housing shortage is driven by changing household sizes rather than population growth alone.
‘Housing, and the housing shortage we have, is not caused by immigration, but immigration needs to be part of the solution for the housing crisis,’ Tony Burke said.
‘If you go back to the Hawke Government … the number of people in Australia has increased by 75 per cent. The number of homes has increased by 100 per cent.
‘So, how on Earth did we end up with a housing problem?’
Burke claimed the answer lies in Australians choosing to live in smaller households.
He said the average number of people per household has fallen from 2.9 during the Hawke era to 2.5 today, creating demand for hundreds of thousands of additional homes.
‘Every time we get a 0.1 change in the number of people per household, we have to find an additional 450,000 homes,’ he said.
Burke said Australians have every right to decide how many people they live with, but argued this trend means migration cannot be blamed for the housing shortage.
‘Anyone who looks at the migration program and wants to somehow say it was their fault, no,’ Burke said.
Instead, he argued immigration should form part of the solution by helping boost the workforce needed to increase housing supply and allow construction to catch up with demand.
He said post-pandemic shifts in living arrangements had intensified pressure on the housing market, further increasing the need for new homes.
Albanese government admits it must deal with ‘visa hopping’
Tony Burke claimed the government needed to crack down on ‘visa hopping’, which he argued allows people to stay in Australia for years despite having no realistic pathway to permanent residency.
He said a small number of migrants are able to ‘jump from visa to visa’ and use the appeals system to prolong their stay.
‘There is a problem with visa hopping,’ Burke said.
Burke said some individuals who would ‘never, in fact, meet the qualifications’ for permanent residency are able to remain in Australia for extended periods before becoming deeply connected to their communities.
He argued this can create situations where governments are reluctant to remove people because they have Australian-citizen children and have spent years building their lives in Australia.
‘We need immigration’: Tony Burke
Tony Burke told the National Press Club that migration remains essential to Australia’s economy, warning that deep cuts would have consequences far beyond major cities.
‘We need immigration,’ he said.
‘We just need to make sure that it is targeted for the needs of Australia in numbers and across the different categories that work for our economy.’
The Home Affairs minister said immigration supports businesses, jobs and industries across both regional and metropolitan Australia.
He added that the benefits extend beyond universities, supporting workers in areas such as maintenance, cleaning, hospitality and retail.
‘Drastic cuts, wherever you make them, hurt the economy in every part, in every area,’ Burke said.
But he also linked migration to challenges in Australia’s housing market, noting many of the workers needed to build new homes were born overseas.
He said close to two-thirds of plasterers in Sydney and Melbourne were migrants.
Burke claims there is no ‘mass migration’ in Australia
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke rejected claims Australia is experiencing ‘mass migration’ during the speech.
‘There are parts of the world where mass migration is something that they are dealing with,’ he said.
‘It is not something we’re dealing with in Australia.’
Burke argued the country’s post-pandemic surge in arrivals had fallen and was now tracking below government forecasts.
‘There was a peak post-pandemic, which was too high. There are reasons why it was too high and reasons why, logically, there was always going to be a peak,’ he said.
The Home Affairs minister said the latest ABS data showed net overseas migration was now 47 per cent below its peak of 556,000 in 2023.
Burke also pushed back on arguments that some visa programs should be excluded from migration debates, insisting every part of the immigration system contributes to overall migration numbers.
‘No area of the immigration program is irrelevant to net overseas migration,’ Burke said.
As an example, he said working holiday-makers contributed 48,000 people to net overseas migration last year, arguing temporary visa holders remain a significant component of Australia’s migration intake.
International students are set to face tough new restrictions on bringing family members to Australia as Labor unveils a major crackdown on temporary migration and visa-hopping.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke will unveil the long-awaited overhaul at the National Press Club in Canberra on Thursday, with the government aiming to cut net overseas migration to 245,000 in 2026-27 and 225,000 the following year.
His highly anticipated speech is titled ‘The work of managing the migration program: Who arrives, who stays, who leaves’.
Almost 46,000 of the 337,427 student visas granted last financial year went to secondary applicants, including partners and dependent children.
Labor is also preparing to target so-called visa-hopping, where temporary migrants move between student, graduate and other visa classes and remain in Australia for years without securing permanent residency.
The announcement comes more than a month after Burke abruptly cancelled an earlier National Press Club appearance amid cabinet disagreement over the scale and design of the reforms.
Overseas migration numbers have dropped, ABS reports
The latest figures on Australia’s net overseas migration reveal a decline in migration levels.
According to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data, net overseas migration fell to 292,100 in the year to March 2026, down from 309,500 in the previous 12-month period.
Despite the decline in net overseas migration, Australia’s population still grew by 392,700 to a total of 27.9 million people.
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