Burke's 2026 Visa Changes: Students, Partners and Parents

If you already hold a Student visa, the 17 September 2026 migration changes do not affect your current visa, and any Student visa application you lodged before 2 October 2026 — including one that listed your partner or children — is assessed under the rules that applied when you lodged it. If you are planning a new application, the position is different: from 2 October 2026 most temporary visa holders can no longer lodge a Student visa (subclass 500) or Student Guardian visa (subclass 590) while in Australia, and Student visa applicants can no longer include family members in the application unless an exemption applies.

This article works through exactly what Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke announced at the National Press Club on 17 September 2026, which parts are already law and which are only policy, and what each change means for international students and their families, for people weighing an onshore Partner visa, and for people considering an onshore Parent visa. It is written to help you decide whether your own plans still work and what, if anything, you need to do.

Minister Burke set out the next stage of the Government's migration policies, framed around the Net Overseas Migration (NOM) forecasts in the Budget: 245,000 in this financial year and 225,000 in 2027/28. NOM is the net figure for people arriving in Australia long-term minus those departing. The Government's stated goal is to meet those forecasts while, in its words, maintaining the integrity of the migration system.

The practical measures that flow from this announcement and matter most to students, families and temporary visa holders are: new rules limiting who can apply for a Student visa from within Australia and whether family members can be included; a stated policy of reducing onshore pathways and encouraging more permanent visa applications to be made from outside Australia; and a focus on what the Government calls ‘visa hopping’.

Three terms do a lot of work here, so it helps to be clear about them before reading the tracker below.

An announced policy is a statement of intent — what the Government says it plans to do. On its own it changes nothing about who can apply for what. A legislative instrument is a legal document, registered on the Federal Register of Legislation, that actually changes the rules under the Migration Regulations 1994. When an instrument is in force, it has legal effect from its commencement date and the Department applies it to applications. An announcement becomes enforceable only once an instrument is made and commences.

The Government has said these changes have begun to be implemented and will be rolled out progressively over the next 12 months, so some measures are already law while others remain policy for now.

From 2 October 2026, two connected changes apply to Student visa (subclass 500) and Student Guardian visa (subclass 590) applications.

First, the family-member restriction. Student visa applicants can no longer include family members — a partner and/or dependent children — in their Student visa application unless an exemption applies. This also applies to people lodging an application for a further Student visa. The common claim that ‘international students can no longer bring family’ overstates this: the change restricts including dependants in the application, and it specifically closes the practice of adding subsequent entrants after the primary visa is granted. If you include a family member who is not eligible to be included, their application will be invalid.

Second, the onshore lodgement restriction. Most temporary visa holders in Australia can no longer lodge a Student or Student Guardian visa application while in Australia. If you are a current Student visa holder applying for another Student visa, you are also affected unless an exemption applies — including a person who currently holds a Student visa as a dependant and wants to apply as the primary applicant.

There are defined exemptions. As a Student visa holder, you may be able to apply for another Student visa in Australia if you:

• need up to 12 more months after your original course end date to finish your studies, continuing with the same education provider (if you have a package of courses, the course needing more time must be your main course);
• are sponsored by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) or Defence;
• are applying to study for a PhD;
• are applying to do primary or secondary school studies;
• have completed your main course at an Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) level and are progressing to a course at a higher AQF level (if the completed course was higher education, the next must also be higher education delivered by a higher education provider);
• have completed school studies and are progressing to a course without an AQF level;
• have completed a non-AQF course and are progressing to a course that does have an AQF level; or
• cannot continue your course because your education provider has defaulted.

Current Student Guardian visa holders can continue to lodge a further Student Guardian visa application while in Australia.

The changes do not affect your current Student visa. Student visa applications lodged before 2 October 2026, including applications that included family members, continue to be assessed under the rules that were in place when they were lodged.

The distinction that matters is between holding a visa and applying for a new one. Simply holding a Student visa changes nothing. But if you are a current Student visa holder who now wants to lodge another Student visa in Australia, the new onshore rule applies to you unless you meet one of the exemptions above. If the new rules prevent you from applying in Australia, you will need to be outside Australia when you lodge and when your visa is granted.

One practical consequence worth planning around: after applying from outside Australia, you may return to Australia on another valid visa while your Student visa application is processed, but you must be outside Australia when it is granted — and you will not receive a Bridging visa linked to an application lodged outside Australia.

‘Visa hopping’ is the Government's shorthand for people it describes as ‘permanently temporary’ — those who move from one visa to the next, who may have spent most of their adult lives in Australia, with children who are now Australian, but who will never meet the skilled migration bar or who wait years on bridging visas for a permanent visa. The stated aim is to restore the norm that a person comes to Australia for a temporary purpose, does that thing, and leaves before their visa expires.

That is a policy objective, not a single new law. The clearest enacted expression of it for students is the onshore lodgement restriction that commenced on 2 October 2026. The Minister also described onshore pathways from temporary visas to student visas being closed — so that people on working holiday maker, training and temporary employer visas, among others, would no longer be able to apply for a student visa while in Australia. Treat the detailed scope of who is caught, and the exemptions, as governed by the registered instrument and the Department's student visa guidance rather than by the speech.

For readers on a subclass 482 or other temporary visa thinking about an onshore student pathway, the practical question is whether your current visa is one of the affected visas and whether any exemption applies to you. For a fuller walkthrough of that specific situation, see whether 482 holders can apply for a student visa onshore in 2026 and the 2026 onshore student visa rules and subclass 500 exceptions.

Condition 8503 is a ‘No Further Stay’ condition. In plain terms, it stops the visa holder from applying for most temporary and permanent visas while they are in Australia. The No Further Stay family of conditions includes 8503, 8534, 8535 and 8540.

If a No Further Stay condition has been imposed on your visa, you can only apply for a limited set of visas to extend your stay while in Australia — such as a protection visa or a bridging visa. In effect, it closes off the option of switching to a different visa (for example, a Partner visa or a student visa) from onshore, and requires you to leave and apply from outside Australia instead.

You can check whether a No Further Stay condition has been imposed on your visa: the condition is listed in your visa grant letter, and you can confirm your visa conditions through Visa Entitlement Verification Online (VEVO). A waiver can be requested in limited circumstances using Form 1447, and the Department's general processing time for a waiver request is up to 28 days. A waiver request should be lodged before your current visa expires — lodging a request does not automatically let you stay lawfully while it is decided, and if your visa expires first you become unlawful.

No. A No Further Stay condition can be imposed on many temporary visas, including Subclass 600 (Visitor) visas, but it is not automatically attached to every visitor visa. The Visitor visa application form reflects this as a possibility rather than a certainty — the applicant acknowledges that if a No Further Stay 8503 condition is imposed, it will limit their ability to remain in Australia beyond the authorised period.

This matters because whether you can later apply for another visa from within Australia depends on the exact conditions on your particular visa. Two people on the same visa subclass can be in different positions. The only reliable way to know your own position is to read your visa grant letter and check your conditions in VEVO.

The 17 September 2026 announcement did not change the onshore Partner visa itself. There is a clear distinction here, and it is worth stating plainly:

• Changing the Partner visa itself — its eligibility, lodgement or processing — is not what the available material establishes. The Partner visa (subclass 820) has been able to be granted to applicants in or outside Australia since 25 November 2023, and nothing in the current material shows the 17 September announcement altering that.
• Changing visitor visa conditions that may affect a future onshore pathway is a separate matter. If a visitor is granted a visa carrying condition 8503, that condition — not any change to the Partner visa — would prevent them applying for a Partner visa from within Australia unless the condition is waived.

So the Partner visa is not closed, abolished or suspended. The realistic risk for someone planning to come to Australia as a visitor and then lodge an onshore Partner application is the ordinary one that has always existed: a No Further Stay condition on the visitor visa would block that onshore step. The Government's broader policy emphasis on more permanent applications being made offshore is a direction of travel, not an enacted change to the 820/801 pathway.

If you are weighing onshore versus offshore lodgement for a partner application, the onshore versus offshore Partner visa comparison and the Partner visa blueprint set out how each pathway works in practice.

Parent visas need to be considered separately from Partner visas, because the two streams work differently and the material affecting them is different.

On Parent visas, the relevant registered instrument is the Migration (Arrangements for Parent Visa Applications) Instrument 2026 (F2026L00441), which commenced from April 2026 and sets out the place, manner and form for making Parent visa applications across the Parent visa classes, including the Contributory streams. This governs how and where Parent visa applications are made. It does not, on the available material, abolish, close or cap the onshore Parent visas (subclasses 804, 864 and 884), and it predates the 17 September announcement.

As with Partner visas, the realistic indirect effect for a parent who enters Australia as a visitor and hopes to lodge an onshore Parent visa is a No Further Stay condition on the visitor visa: if condition 8503 is imposed, it prevents an onshore application unless waived. That is a feature of the visitor visa, not a change to the Parent visa. Current official processing-time, queue or cap figures for the Parent streams are not stated here — confirm these with the Department of Home Affairs for your specific subclass.

For how the Parent streams compare and what each requires, see the Parent visa guide.

The table below gives a direct verdict for each situation. Where a protection has only been published for the student stream, that is stated rather than assumed to apply elsewhere.

If your plan depends on switching visas from inside Australia, the two things to settle first are: (1) whether any exemption lets you lodge your student application onshore, and (2) whether a No Further Stay condition is — or would be — imposed on the visa you hold or are applying for. Get those wrong and the cost is real: an invalid student application can affect your visa status, and if your visa has already expired you may be unable to apply for a further visa.

Worked example. Priya holds a Student visa with a main course ending in June 2027. She wants to extend to finish that same course with the same provider. Because she needs up to 12 more months after her original course end date and is continuing with the same education provider, she falls within the exemption for finishing her main course, and may apply for another Student visa in Australia. By contrast, if Priya instead wanted to switch to a brand-new diploma at a different provider at the same or lower qualification level, no listed exemption fits that move, so she would need to be outside Australia both when she lodges and when the visa is granted.

What is settled: the student onshore lodgement and family-member rules are in force from 2 October 2026; existing student visas and pre-2 October applications are protected; condition 8503 exists and operates as described, and can be imposed on visitor visas but is not automatic; and the Parent and eVisitor application-arrangement instruments are in force.

What remains open: the Government has said the broader package will be rolled out progressively over the next 12 months, so further measures are expected but not all are yet enacted. The number of people affected across any stream — students, dependants, Partner or Parent applicants, or visitor visa holders — is not quantified by the Department in the material available, so treat any specific figure you see circulating as unverified.

You can confirm the status of each measure yourself against the primary documents rather than relying on second-hand summaries:

• Student visa conditions and the new rules: the Department's Student visa (subclass 500) page, available at immi.homeaffairs.gov.au.
• The student instrument: Migration (Student Visa Applications to Be Made from outside Australia) Instrument 2026, F2026L01348, on the Federal Register of Legislation.
• The eVisitor instrument: F2026L01306. The Parent application-arrangements instrument: F2026L00441.
• Your own visa conditions: your visa grant letter and VEVO; No Further Stay waivers are made on Form 1447.
• The announcement itself: the Minister's statement and the Department's migration policy changes page.

This article is general information, not personal migration advice. Your situation turns on the exact conditions on your visa and the facts of your case, so confirm your own position against the documents above or with a registered migration agent before you lodge, enrol, travel or commit money.

Prepared by Global Migrations (Global Migration & Education Solutions, ABN 22 998 014 414). Registered migration agent: Ranbir Singh, MARN 1069570. 36 Zodiac Way, Plumpton VIC 3335. Phone +61 3 7043 2395. Email info@globalmigrations.com.au. This content is not official Department of Home Affairs policy.