Populists’ ‘net negative migration’ plan slashes student visas

Australia’s One Nation party has vowed to reverse more than a decade of growth in overseas enrolments as part of its quest to bring population increases “back to a sustainable rate”.

The populist party has promised to return international student numbers to 2015 levels by drastically reducing admissions. The measures would contribute to the party’s aim of slashing more than 750,000 temporary visas by committing to “net negative migration” for three years, before reverting to a previously announced net overseas migration “ceiling” of 130,000 a year.

Party leader Pauline Hanson said Australia’s “broken” migration system needed a reset. “Families are competing with hundreds of [students] for rental accommodation. Patients are stuck in ambulances because there are not enough hospital beds. Young Australians are being locked out of home ownership while wages and infrastructure fail to keep up.

“The Labor-Liberal political cartel has sacrificed Australian living standards to serve vested interests demanding continued mass migration. A larger economy on paper means nothing if Australians are poorer per person.”

The proposals were apparently timed to steal thunder from the government’s announcement of migration reforms, expected this week. Hanson said universities would still be able to enrol more than 100,000 foreigners a year, with priority given to universities that provided accommodation for their international students.

A new “high-value postgraduate study visa” would help attract the world’s “brightest minds” in science, engineering and medical research, “giving Australia the talent we need to compete and returning universities to their proper role as research institutions rather than visa factories”.

The Group of Eight said research-intensive universities were not visa factories. “The biggest risk from proposals like this is not what they mean for university budgets – it is the message they send,” said chief executive Vicki Thomson.

“When political leaders repeatedly talk about cutting student numbers, talented young people hear a simple message: Australia is becoming…less welcoming. If we genuinely want to attract the world’s brightest minds, we cannot keep sending signals that they are not wanted. [The] system should not be a free-for-all. Neither should it be driven by slogans or broad-brush assumptions that treat every institution and student the same.”

Luke Sheehy, CEO of Universities Australia, said One Nation, the Labor government and the opposition coalition were in “a political race to the bottom on international students. You can’t take skills, jobs and billions of dollars of economic activity out of the country and pretend there will be no consequences. 

“Public funding has failed to keep pace with the cost of teaching, research and infrastructure. International education has helped fill that gap. If politicians want to rip that revenue out of the system, they need to tell Australians what replaces it.”

Hanson said “vested interests and elite economists” would “shriek” at her proposals. “But Canada has shown you can cut migrant numbers, take pressure off rents and still grow the economy.”

Canada’s draconian cuts to the number of student visas it grants has caused international student numbers to plummet.

Hanson promised more information about her proposals in the coming days. Details released so far include reducing annual issuances of student visas to 115,000 – down from almost 340,000 in 2025-26 – including 15,000 high-value postgraduate study visas.

Graduate visas would be capped at about 20,000 a year, compared with more than 140,000 last financial year, while most visitors would be barred from applying for student visas from within Australia. The looming government changes are likewise thought likely to include limits to onshore visa applications.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com