One Nation’s plan to slash Australia’s international student intake could clear the massive backlog of temporary visa applicants clogging the appeals system, but it could also “decimate” the university sector.
As Labor prepares to announce sweeping migration reforms of its own, Pauline Hanson pipped the government with a plan to reduce the number of temporary visa holders and overstayers by more than 750,000 over three years.
International student visas bore the brunt of the cuts, with visa grants set to be reduced from more than 290,000 to 115,000 per year and secondary visas for family members eliminated.
Governments had forced universities into relying on foreign student fees to balance their books, International Education Association of Australia chief executive Phil Honeywood said.
“The types of changes proposed will decimate an industry that employs 250,000 Australians and crucially keeps our public universities afloat,” he told AAP.
Growing numbers of international students, and their families, remaining in Australia on bridging visas have been a major contributor to net overseas migration overshooting the government’s forecasts in recent years.
As the Home Affairs department has ramped up refusals for student visa applications, the number of students launching appeals in the Administrative Review Tribunal has exploded.
The total number of migration and refugee cases being assessed almost doubled from July 2024 to July 2026.
Labor earlier this year passed legislation changing the way the tribunal conducts hearings for student visa appeals in a bid to speed up processing times and cut down the backlog.
Since the limit on in-person hearings for student visas took effect on June 1, it has shown some early promise.
From July 2025 to the end of May 2026, 2.4 new appeals were lodged with the tribunal for every case that the tribunal finalised.
In June, the rate of cases lodged to cases finalised fell to 1.8 and in July it was 1.1.
A spokesperson for Attorney-General Michelle Rowland said the government’s changes to the Administrative Review Tribunal had enabled it to finalise a greater number of cases than its predecessor.
However, a tribunal spokesperson cautioned that the figures don’t account for seasonal variation in processing times, as the tribunal tends to slow down over the Christmas break and ramp up towards the end of the financial year.
Regardless, the student visa backlog still grew to 53,608 by the end of July.
“I don’t think that solves the problem in the way that the government needs to,” immigration expert Abul Rizvi said.
“It’s just a small improvement on a big problem.”
Mr Honeywood said there was evidence that a minority of international students were gaming the system and changes made by the federal government in recent years have attempted to clamp down on it.
“Unfortunately that has developed a lawyers’ picnic that allows any number of appeals and the Albanese government are finding ways to reduce appeal rights for non-genuine students,” he said.
One Nation promised to end “visa-hopping” by preventing students from applying for repeat visas and requiring most visa applications to be made from overseas.
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