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Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke will unveil a major migration policy shake-up, including a ban on international students bringing family members, as new ABS data shows net overseas migration fell to 292,100 in the 12 months to March 2026.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke will announce a major overhaul of Australia's migration policy at the National Press Club in Canberra this afternoon, a month later than initially planned.
The speech was postponed because the measures were internally contentious. It comes just after the Australian Bureau of Statistics released figures showing net overseas migration has fallen to 292,100 people in the 12 months to March 2026. That is down from 309,500 in the previous 12 months. Despite the drop, Australia's population still grew by 392,700 to 27.9 million people.
Western Australia has the fastest population growth at 2.1 per cent, followed by Victoria at 1.6 per cent. Burke's plan aims to reduce net overseas migration to 225,000 by 2028. It includes an effective ban on international students bringing family members to Australia. The policy also targets the ballooning number of overstayers, restricts visa hopping, and reins in surging onshore asylum claims.
Burke argues the visa program has lacked sufficient oversight since the Howard era. The measures aim to enforce more departures and deportations once visas expire. Labor will try to salvage its long-awaited migration plan after weeks of cabinet squabbling over how to reduce the intake by 80,000. The temporary migrant population has grown to 3 million, becoming a top-level concern for voters battling high inflation and housing costs.
Burke's address is titled The work of managing the migration program: who arrives, who stays, who leaves. It is timed one day before Prime Minister Anthony Albanese flies to New York. The speech follows the release of ABS migration data covering the first three months of the year, when migration traditionally swells as people move for jobs and education.
Australia's population growth has been slowing since it peaked at almost 2.5 per cent in the second half of 2023, but it remains among the fastest in the developed world. Net overseas migration reached a record 556,000 in the 12 months to September 2023. Last year, it eased to 311,000. The political debate over migration is intensifying.
The Coalition is split over Pauline Hanson's push to achieve negative migration. Former Liberal minister Chris Pyne said last night that migration has made Australia what it is today and that culling international students would be an act of self-harm. He called on politicians to stand up for a migration population that is sustainable.
Pyne also acknowledged the benefits migrants bring, saying Australia is so powerful internationally because of its multiculturalism and the knowledge, skills and language commonalities of its people. One Nation also announced its migration plan this week, proposing to cut Australia's temporary migrant population by 750,000 over three years. The party faces fresh questions about vetting after a man who volunteered for One Nation during its West Australian by-election was previously named by a federal tribunal for promoting neo-Nazi ideologies.
David Donis handed out how-to-vote cards in the state seat of Secret Harbour last month. He was a founding member and president of the Society of Western Australian Nationalists (SWAN), a now-deregistered organisation the Administrative Appeals Tribunal found was a racist extremist group. The tribunal's comments about Mr Donis were made in a 2023 case concerning an army reservist's security clearance.
The revelations sparked fresh questions about vetting months after Pauline Hanson revealed the party had shut branches she said were infiltrated by extremists. In other news, new research has found the Indigenous population before 1788 was up to seven times larger than previously estimated. Researchers believe the Indigenous population declined by more than two million people between 1788 and 1861 due to frontier violence and disease.
A researcher said a paper published a couple of months ago looked at the initial smallpox epidemic in Botany Bay just after the First Fleet arrived, which was also vastly underestimated. They determined that up to 220,000 Indigenous people died within the first year or so of that outbreak, and that was only one outbreak. Subsequent outbreaks occurred in the 1820s and 30s, and again in the 1860s in different parts of Australia.
The Senate has passed a bill to ensure there will not be a monetary cap placed on veterans' health in the future. The bill, introduced by Jacqui Lambie and sponsored by crossbench senators, passed 33 votes to 19. It was supported by the Coalition, the Greens and One Nation, but will now need to go to the House, where it is unlikely to pass as the government controls the numbers.
Lambie welcomed the government's decision to reverse a $5,000 cap on veterans' health. She told veterans not to take their anger out on Minister Matt Keogh. Matt is the best thing that we've bloody had, she said. And he's the smartest thing we've had.
Okay, he's taken a bit of a trip on this one, he didn't get this right, but what that department is doing, considering the amount of pressure it's been under, is the best I have seen that department operating. There is still a long way to go. The federal government has announced the breast cancer and endometriosis drug Triptorelin will be made available on the Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme from October.
Zoladex stops a patient's ovaries from producing oestrogen, a hormone which can fuel breast cancer and endometriosis. A breast cancer survivor who removed her ovaries due to uncertainty over a critical drug welcomed the listing, saying it gives women certainty and choice. Katie spoke at a press conference alongside the health minister, saying today's announcement would prevent women from making irreversible decisions about their bodies because their options were limited.
A metastatic cancer diagnosis guarantees a life full of hard uncertainties, but whether I can access the treatment that my oncologist prescribes should never be one of them, she said. In New South Wales, driving instructors will be required to display a sign in their vehicle encouraging students to report instructor misconduct to Transport for New South Wales.
The move addresses a key concern learners raised about not knowing who to tell if an instructor made a creepy comment, groped them or worse. Jenny Aitchison says she hopes it will encourage students to come forward. We know that often those situations can create that power imbalance which means that people can feel unsafe and they may feel reluctant to report, she says.
The state government haven't gone as far as their counterparts in South Australia, who have mandated the use of dashcams in instructor vehicles.
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abcnews:Live: Government's migration policy to be unveiled by Tony BurkeThis story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
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