Suggested Cabinet submission for 2026-27 migration and humanitarian program

The Albanese Government is about to consider a cabinet submission on the 26-27 migration program. Former Immigration Department Deputy Secretary Dr Abul Rizvi  has drafted IA’s submission.

IN THE NEXT few weeks and before the Farrer by-election, the Albanese Government will likely consider a cabinet submission on the 26-27 migration program. I helped develop a decade’s worth of migration Cabinet submissions between 1995 and 2006. But none would have been as difficult to draft as the one for 2026-27.

That is not just because of the multitude of issues that need to be addressed, but because it has to be developed against the background of a surging One Nation with its usual simplistic immigration ideas, as well as a Coalition desperate to stem the flow of votes to One Nation through populist immigration slogans rather than a long-term plan.

I thought if I should draft the submission I would suggest to the Albanese Government (note this is written as if Immigration Minister Tony Burke is the author).

RIZVI CABINET SUBMISSION

The 2026-27 migration/humanitarian programs must address three main challenges:

1. At Question Time, the Prime Minister implicitly endorsed Treasury’s net migration forecast, but the latest net migration data means we are still a long way from delivering those despite extensive policy tightening from mid-2023 and in recent months.
2. Application backlogs and rising demand for permanent migration, particularly partners, employer-sponsored and state-nominated migration, are well beyond the places available, particularly due to the surge in net migration from 2022.
3. Flow through from students and working holiday makers, even under current policy settings, will keep net migration above Treasury forecasts and keep increasing pressure on permanent migration. The stock of temporary entrants in Australia of almost 3 million is up over a million over the last decade due to successive governments failing to develop a plan for and manage net migration. Three million temporary entrants are incompatible with the size of the current permanent intake.

As recommended by the 2023 Parkinson Review, and endorsed by the Government prior to the 2025 Election, we must develop a long-term migration plan and to properly explain the underlying rationale of the plan to the Australian public. An aim of this would be to counter the simplistic sloganeering from One Nation and the Coalition.

The plan should be based on delivering the net migration forecasts that were in place prior to the last Election and endorsed recently by the Prime Minister. While the 260,000 net migration forecast for 2025-26 is now unlikely to be delivered given net migration for the September quarter of 2025-26 was already at 87,000, there is still time to make the necessary policy changes to deliver the 2026-27 forecast of 225,000.

We should explicitly and publicly commit to delivering net migration at 225,000 per annum (plus or minus 10,000). That would be a reduction of net migration of almost 100,000 compared to the 311,000 net migration estimate for the 12 months to September 2025. It would result in long-term population growth of initially around 325,000 per annum with natural increase gradually declining given the current fertility rate and population ageing.

If we deliver the Treasury net migration forecasts, compared to projections in the last Budget before covid (such as 2019, which assumed net migration of around 270,000 per annum), our population by 2030-31 would be around 750,000 less and slightly older in terms of median age and the age dependency ratio. The slower rate of population growth would help infrastructure, housing and service delivery to catch up. It would fill the current vacuum in long-term immigration policy and give businesses, government agencies and the public the predictability they are seeking. It would reduce risk of the wild fluctuations in net migration that comparable nations have experienced in recent years.

Permanent migration

We should maintain the current migration program at 185,000 plus 3,270 Pacific Engagement Visas (PEVs) but change the composition to address unsustainable backlogs. Note the permanent migration intake makes a relatively small contribution to net migration.

By end 2025-26, we may have a record backlog of around 120,000 partner applications and growing rapidly. Migration law requires us to manage these on a demand driven basis. We may also have a backlog of around 70,000 Employer Nomination Scheme (ENS) applications and also growing rapidly. All state/territory governments are demanding more places for state nominated visas to meet their needs, including in regional Australia, due to the strong labour market.

We must reduce the backlog of partner applications through three measures:

1. Expansion of the partner planning level over three years well above the current 40,500.
2. Tighter criteria for partner visas, including increased minimum age of both the sponsor and applicant; longer co-habitation requirement for de facto relationships; a minimum period couples must be married as a time of application criteria and closure of the prospective marriage visa to new applicants to give priority to people who are already married.
3. Gradual reduction in the stock of temporary entrants in Australia.

The backlog of ENS applications must also be reduced through similar measures including an increase in places for ENS above the current 44,000 as well as a longer minimum period of skilled work experience requirement to slow the rate of growth in new applications.

To accommodate additional places for partners and ENS, we should temporarily reduce places for skilled independents, parents and the humanitarian program. Some reduction in places for state/territory nominated and regional visas may also be necessary.

Temporary entrant stocks

To reduce the flow through to demand for permanent residence from students and temporary graduates, cease relying on high offshore student visa refusal rates using highly subjective criteria. That approach is poorly targeted, inefficient, creates far too much uncertainty as well as a record number of appeals to the Administrative Review Tribunal.

Instead:

• Use a high integrity and high security university entrance exam (and another objective method for construction trades) to ensure we attract students of the highest academic standards and use the exam pass mark to better manage overall numbers (some concession in the pass mark may be needed for genuinely regional universities not just those with metropolitan campuses).
• Limit onshore student visas to those enrolled in high quality courses that lead to skills in long-term demand — that will also reduce student visa appeals to the ART where we now have a backlog of around 50,000 and growing;
• Limit temporary graduate visas to those students who have completed high quality courses in areas of long-term skills in demand. That will over time reduce the number of people on temporary graduate visas which are also at record levels.

The above measures would help reduce net migration towards the Treasury forecast for 2026-27 and also reduce the stock of temporary entrants. But these may not be sufficient.

Other measures to reduce net migration and the temporary entry stock should include:

• Abolish the option of a third visa for working holiday makers/work and holiday visa holders; standardise each working holiday maker visa to one-year validity and a maximum age of 30; and apply English language testing to all working holiday maker visa types not just for selected non-English speaking nations (eg why apply English language testing for Spanish working holiday makers and not French?).
• Revert to the two-year skilled work experience requirement for skilled temporary visas (adjust length of temporary graduate visas as required).
• Revert to requirement for NZ citizens to go through the permanent residence phase in order to access Australian citizenship.
• Count the Pacific Engagement Visa (PEV) within the migration program (as this is a permanent visa but for no logical reason it is currently not counted in the program) and confine it to Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) visa holders who develop recognised skills relevant to higher pay jobs on farms, construction sites, etc. Abolish the lottery system for the PEV as that is a very poor method for selecting permanent migrants. Allow PALM visa holders to access TAFE courses and English language courses on a fee free basis and require employers to give their employees time off to attend these courses. This should also reduce the incentive for PALM visa holders to apply for asylum. We should also introduce a basic English language requirement for PALM visa applicants.
• Further measures to encourage more unsuccessful asylum seekers to depart (both incentives and penalties). While the additional processing funding we allocated has led to a reduction in both the primary and review backlogs, the number of unsuccessful asylum seekers not departed continues to grow. It is now over 104,600 refused at primary level and over 65,900 refused at both primary and review. That situation increases worker exploitation, undermines confidence in our immigration and asylum systems. This number cannot be allowed to continue to grow.
• Despite measures to reduce migrant worker exploitation, this continues to be a significant issue as a recent government investigation has found. While much has been done in this space, we need to further strengthen penalties against employers who exploit migrant workers, including criminal penalties, as well as further increasing immigration compliance activity. Information provided to migrant workers on their rights must be increased.

Impact of proposed changes and likely stakeholder reactions

The overall impact of these changes should be broadly budget positive due to the increase in ENS places and reduced parent and humanitarian program places. The reduced skilled independent places and state/territory government nominated places would be a budget negative while partners tend to be budget neutral. There would be criticism of the shift in the balance away from the skill stream but that shift should be temporary.

There would be a negligible impact on the unemployment and inflation rate and, all things equal, slightly slower economic and employment growth. Better targeting of long-term skill needs should help to address skill shortages, both current and projected. It means the population will age slightly faster but Australia would still be ageing more slowly than comparable countries and major trading partners. Ageing will continue to require us to attract sufficient health and aged care workers, particularly if we are to reduce hospital waiting times or at least prevent these from increasing further.

A shift in the balance of the intake towards partners and a reduction in net migration would reduce pressure on housing. An increase in housing completions would still be needed. To help with this, we need a visa mechanism to attract more applications from highly skilled trade workers who can quickly adjust to Australia’s licensing requirements including English language skills.

Canada has seen a 20 per cent reduction in house prices (but only a very marginal reduction in rents) and there has been media reporting that we should therefore copy Canada. That would be a mistake. Canada had a much steeper and larger increase in house prices post-covid than Australia. The subsequent decline in house prices in Canada was due to record housing completions over 2-3 years and close to zero net migration in 2025 but with a much larger permanent migration program than us.

Canada’s zero net migration was delivered through a combination of a very weak labour market and massive tightening of student visa policy that decimated the budgets of most Canadian universities leading to huge job cuts and flow through impact on surrounding businesses. That is not a model we want to copy. Canada will soon need to reverse its immigration policy tightening given they are much more aged than us and with a much lower fertility rate. Extreme fluctuations in net migration reflect poor policy and poor migration management.

While there will be criticism of our proposed changes from certain industry bodies, particularly the international education, agriculture and tourism industries, the benefits of long-term certainty in terms of net migration levels would outweigh these criticisms. Employer groups will oppose stronger penalties for employers who exploit migrant workers.

A negative reaction from all state/territory governments and regional development bodies to a reduction in their allocations would also need to be managed. Some of the changes would need to be negotiated with a range of nations including the UK, NZ and Pacific Island nations.  

There would be a negative reaction from some parts of the community to changes to partner visa criteria and reduction in parent places. Refugee advocates would criticise any reduction in humanitarian places. However, all of these critics would support the additional places for partners which should be the highest priority.

A number of the above changes would require legislative/regulatory amendments that could be opposed/disallowed in the Senate.

Dr Abul Rizvi is an Independent Australia columnist and a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul or Bluesky @abulrizvi.bsky.social.

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