Australia will place tourists who overstay their visas in immigration detention to deter unauthorized stays, under an overhaul unveiled this week by the Labor government as part of a broader push to lower net migration.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the reforms mark a return to pre-2015 settings, when detention was routinely used to encourage visa overstayers to organize their own departures. Under the changes, the government will open 250 additional detention beds and add 100 compliance officers, with an existing quarantine facility in Melbourne under consideration for repurposing.
Burke said the policy is aimed at drawing down the roughly 77,000 unlawful non-citizens currently in Australia. Assistant Foreign Minister Matt Thistlethwaite said the goal was deterrence, so that word would spread that overstaying, even briefly, risked a detention stay.
The reforms also include a ban on international students bringing family members, a ballot system for working holiday makers, and tighter scrutiny of weak protection visa claims. Officials say net overseas migration, which fell to 292,000 in the year to March, still runs well above the government’s target of 225,000 by 2028.
Burke rejected comparisons to the United States’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying the plan would not involve the kind of raids seen there, and described it as a return to a “routine” process rather than a punitive escalation. Immigration and rights advocates were largely unpersuaded: the Refugee Council of Australia said punitive detention likely breaches Australia’s human rights obligations, while the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and the Human Rights Law Centre warned expanded detention capacity risked repeating past harms and could deter exploited migrant workers from reporting abuse. The Australian Tourism Industry Council also raised concerns about damage to the country’s reputation as a travel destination.
The changes can largely be implemented under existing government powers, though further reforms targeting student visas and family arrangements will require parliamentary approval.
