What changes for international students

The rules announced on Friday (2 October 2026) stack on top of earlier announcements that stop international students moving into a lower grade course, such as switching from a bachelor's or master's degree to a vocational program. In a social media post, Home affairs minister Tony Burke said new rules had taken effect that day to end student visa hopping, in pursuit of a migration system Australians can trust.

• •Transferring courses will require students to lodge a separate visa application.
• •In the interim, a student will be barred from transferring within 12 months of beginning a course.
• •From 1 July 2027, Hill said, a student's visa will no longer be extended, even where the holder is moving into a different course.

Hill, the assistant minister for international education, said the 2027 measure prevents rorting, closing off a pattern in which students skip attendance in the first six months, fail their subjects and then move to a cheaper provider.

A wider push to cut migration

Speaking to the Migration Institute of Australia, Hill said the changes would stop the growth of 'permanently temporary' migration. Guests in Australia, he argued, should not spend years or decades hopping between visas and gaming appeals and court systems:

The announcement belongs to a wider push to bring net overseas migration down, and the government has amended rules directly instead of legislating separately because it does not have the support of the Coalition or the Greens. Labor's target is to cut net overseas migration from an annual level of almost 300,000 to 225,000 by 2028.

More than 400,000 people now hold bridging visas - temporary visas granted when someone's visa has expired and they await a decision on a further application, or issued to asylum seekers and non-citizens. International students applying for a different visa can make up a large cohort of these holders, a number the government is trying to reduce.

Clampdown on migration agents

The measures also reach agents and lawyers who sell 'false hope' - helping people pursue baseless visa claims so they can stay in Australia longer. Under the proposal, agents would be banned from assisting with an application that they know, or reasonably ought to know, does not have a reasonable factual or legal basis.

In Hill's account, a small number of bad actors using increasingly sophisticated migration-related misconduct do disproportionate harm, singling out people at vulnerable points in their lives who are susceptible to misleading claims and false promises. Charging money in that situation, he argued, does not help people - it exploits them and sells false hope.

Migration lawyers face separate scrutiny

For lawyers, Hill said, the current system authorises - and arguably requires - them to act for clients in ways that damage both the administration of the migration system and public confidence in it. As one example, he described a lawyer who lodged an application expecting it to be refused, appealed that refusal to the administrative appeals tribunal, and then pursued a ministerial intervention.

He said lawyers had also run online advertising he described as outrageous - ads that appeared to coach people on how to claim they were bisexual when they were not, or to say they were being persecuted, to support a protection claim.

The next step sits with the Department of Home Affairs, which Hill said will consult on how to ensure migration lawyers are also held to account for similar poor practices.