Australia will stop foreign students from bringing partners and children to accompany them while they study and tighten working holiday visa rules, a senior Minister said on Thursday (September 17, 2026), amid growing debate over high migration levels.
President Donald Trump. Mr. “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. Despite this, foreign students have been a central focus of the centre-left Labor government’s migration reduction efforts.
The government’s move comes after the hard-right One Nation party, which has been surging in recent polls, said this week that it would slash the number of temporary migrants by 750,000 over three years, to give Australians “breathing space. Burke said Australia would toughen its enforcement on visa overstayers, including hiring 100 additional compliance officers and exploring the repurposing of a pandemic-era quarantine facility in Melbourne to house immigration detainees. International education contributed A$53.6 billion ($38 billion) to the Australian economy in the year to June 2025, making it the country’s fourth-largest export.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke dismissed suggestions the changes were politically motivated by the One Nation party, which describes its approach as “Australia first” and whose policies have drawn comparisons to those of U.S. And if you no longer have a valid visa, you should leave Australia,” he said. “It is chipping away the confidence in what has been a great national asset for this country — international education,” Luke Sheehy, CEO of Universities Australia, said in a radio interview with public broadcaster ABC on the proposed policy shift.
