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The Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke, addressed the National Press Club on 17 September 2026 with a major speech announcing the government’s proposed changes to the Australian visa system. The speech was entitled, “Who Comes. Who Stays. Who Leaves”.
In relating to the “who leaves” part of the speech, the Minister announced the government would invest in 100 additional Compliance Officers and 250 additional detention beds, with the government looking at the possibility of repurposing the quarantine facility in Melbourne, presumably a reference to Victoria’s Covid era purpose-built North Melbourne Mickleham quarantine facility that was closed in October 2022 and handed back to the Commonwealth government on 1 January 2023.
The Minister prefaced that announcement with a reference to the situation which he says existed prior to 2015 when visa overstayers would be detained and within a few weeks would leave (often by the overstayers purchasing their own plane ticket). Every time the Minister would visit a detention facility he would see a completely different population. Further, for every person forcibly removed in this manner, 6-7 people would leave Australia voluntarily in order to avoid detention and forced removal.
The Minister explained that in 2015 the then government introduced mandatory visa cancellation on character grounds (a reference to 501(3A) of the Migration Act 1958 CTH) which had led to a dramatic change to the nature and composition of the immigration detention centre population. Now the majority of detainees come into immigration detention from prison and remain in immigration detention for long periods while merits and judicial review are pursued. The Minister commented that this has also meant that it is no longer safe for non-criminal overstayers to stay there with that more criminal cohort.
The Minister stated that Australia will return to that pre-2015 process whereby visa overstayers are located, detained and quickly removed from Australia. The Minister stated that he believed that returning to that pre-2015 system would also lead to a change in attitude in overstayers such that for every 1 person detained, another 6-7 people would once again voluntarily depart.
David Prince, Principal Solicitor
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