Australia enacts bans on dependants and onshore visa applications

Australia’s latest international education overhaul will manage student flows “without trashing one of our nation’s largest and proudest export sectors”, the government claims, but critics say near-weekly “whack-a-mole” changes are sending colleges to the wall.

The government has released further details about changes it announced in September, with major restrictions now applying to foreign students who want to bring family members into Australia, change courses midstream or progress to further study. From 2 October, dependant visas will only be available to family members of doctoral candidates, government scholarship holders, South-east Asians and Pacific islanders.

Speculation that master’s-by-research students would also be exempted from the dependants ban proved unfounded, with the government evidently unwilling to spark a gold rush in master’s enrolments.

Students and their dependants will have to lodge their visa applications simultaneously, with no scope to add extra family members later. Dependants who want to study will first have to obtain fresh student visas from overseas. Other temporary visa holders, including working holidaymakers, will likewise be ineligible for student visas until they have left Australia.

Students will be able to apply within Australia for visas enabling further study, but only at higher qualification levels. Students will also be able to switch courses midstream, but from mid-2027 this will require “transfer” visas, which will reportedly cost about A$1,200 (£630) and will retain the original visa’s expiry date. In the meantime, students will not be allowed to switch from their original courses for the first 12 months, under a temporary extension to the usual six-month exclusion window.

The assistant minister for international education and citizenship, Julian Hill, said “legitimate” course changes would still be permitted. But the government was determined to arrest the “unacceptably high onshore transfer activity”.

“A visitor visa is for a visit – not a backdoor to come and stay for 30 years,” he told a Sydney conference of the Migration Institute of Australia, according to speech notes. “When Australians go to another country, they do not believe they have some God-given right to hop around from visa to visa for years or decades and game other nations’ appeals and courts systems. Neither should guests in our country.”

He pledged “consequences” for anybody who flouted visa conditions. “A 250-bed boost to detention centre capacity will [be] sending a signal to everyone and giving firm meaning to a visa’s expiry date.”

Consultant and former regulator Claire Field said Australia’s international education sector was already in “dire straits” from previous policy changes. “While these new changes contain more challenges for good students and good institutions alike, much of the impact on the sector has already happened,” she said.

“The policy tweaks are now about trying to dissuade people from using student visas to stay in Australia or to bring loved ones into the country with them.”

English language college director Ian Pratt said the government had changed the arrangements for working holidaymakers four times over the past eight weeks. “Young people have long worked, travelled and saved before moving into study and returning home with [an] Australian qualification,” Pratt observed on LinkedIn. “That pathway has been abolished.

“There were already 45 substantial changes to student visas and international education under this government before [home affairs minister Tony] Burke’s announcement last week. God knows where the number stands now. This is not how competent government manages a major export industry. There is no plan, no long-term strategy and no stable destination.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com