Politics Analysis

Booming partner visa backlog will reduce migration opportunities for students

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(Image via Swapan Basu | Flickr - edited)

A surge in partner visa applications is causing problems for the Government which may need to change laws to prevent breaking them, writes Dr Abul Rizvi.

THE PARTNER VISA application backlog is again booming and now stands at over 75,000 with a planning level of only 41,000 visas in 2024-25. The Government cannot legally allow that backlog to keep rising. So what will it do?

The Migration Act prohibits the Government from capping or limiting the number of partner visa places. The law requires these to be managed on a demand-driven basis.  

After Opposition Leader Peter Dutton illegally limited partner visa places in the migration program while he was Home Affairs Minister, the backlog increased to over 96,000 applicants at end June 2020 but he allocated less than 40,000 partner places in the annual migration program (see Chart 1).

Responding to pressure from Labor MP Julian Hill (now the Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) and the Auditor-General, the Coalition Government used the opportunity of international border closures to clear much of that backlog, reducing it to just around 56,000 by June 2022.

A figure caption for your reading pleasure

The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) also started using the mantra that partner visas were being processed on a demand-driven basis as required by the Migration Act. That was designed to keep the Auditor-General happy and reduce the risk the Auditor-General would criticise DHA for imposing an illegal administrative cap on partner visas.

But a mantra can be different to reality.

In 2023-24 DHA received more than 65,000 new partner visa applications. DHA says it increased the allocation of places for partners in 2023-24 by a few hundred as places became available because of a shortfall in the special eligibility stream. The problem with that statement is that it confirms DHA does not manage partners on a demand-driven basis. It’s an admission of guilt.

With less than 41,000 places notionally allocated in 2024-25, DHA has two choices:

  1. illegally keep slowing partner visa processing to keep the number of partner visas granted to 41,000 and thus allow the backlog to keep growing; or
  2. shift places from parent visas and the skill stream to partner visas.

Legally, DHA can only choose option 2. But that would reduce permanent residence opportunities for the almost 1.1 million students and former students currently in Australia. Reducing the skill stream of the migration program to make more places available for partners would be attacked by almost every business lobby group. Reducing places for parent visas to make more places available for partners would attract criticism from a range of stakeholder groups.

If the Labor Government keeps slowing partner visa processing and allowing the backlog to blow out, Peter Dutton will desperately want to criticise the Labor Government for doing what he did.

But he has announced that his policy is to reduce the migration program to 140,000 with only one-third of that in the family stream. Under his policy, he would have no choice but to keep breaking the law to an even greater degree.

Will our media allow both the Labor Government and the Coalition to get away with that?

Or will the two major parties agree to do what former Attorney-General Philip Ruddock described as unconscionable in the late 1980s — change the law to allow the Government to legally cap partner visas?

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.

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