Australia to cut migration to ease housing pressure

Australia will cut migration by tightening student and working holiday visa rules and cracking down on overstayers, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Thursday, arguing that housing needed time to catch up.

Burke told the National Press Club in Canberra that immigration was "fundamentally a strength" for Australia, but said housing pressures required changes. He stressed that migrants had not caused the housing shortage.

Net overseas migration reached 538,000 in 2022 after a surge in arrivals when borders reopened after the Covid-19 pandemic. Data released Thursday showed the figure fell to 292,100 in the year to March. Burke said policy changes would help Australia reach a target of 225,000 next year.

Students are the largest group of arrivals, with 753,000 international students in Australia, most from China and India, according to the data cited by Burke. Under the new rules, family members seeking to join students will face new curbs, and it will become harder for students to move between courses to extend their stay.

A backlog of applications from the United Kingdom for working holiday visas will continue to be processed slowly after a record 80,000 applications, Burke said. Working holiday makers in rural areas will enter a ballot to stay for a second or third year, with 5,000 visas available for the third year.

Family members seeking to visit Australians will have "no further stay" conditions attached to their temporary visas. Migrants with construction and housing skills will be prioritised for visas.

Burke said Australia would return to a policy used a decade earlier, under which visa overstayers are given two weeks to leave the country or face detention and deportation. He said an additional 100 compliance officers and 250 more immigration detention beds would show there are consequences for overstaying a visa.

Burke denied that the ruling Labor party was tightening visa rules in response to the rise of One Nation, which has pledged to slash migration. Business groups warned that migration cuts would damage the economy.