Migrant numbers grow as government’s international student crackdown begins

The federal government is bracing for more questions over its control of the nation’s population growth with new figures expected to show another 150,000 migrants entering the country, putting at risk budget forecasts for total migration numbers.

As Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil signalled the government would start issuing warning notices to high-risk education providers that have become “visa factories”, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday is expected to show an increase in total net migration in the three months to the end of September.

The government had forecast in the current budget that total net overseas migration through the 2023-24 financial year would edge down to 315,000. But a 150,000 increase in the September quarter would make it exceptionally difficult to stay within the full-year forecast.

Population growth, already at a 40-year-high rate of 2.4 per cent, is expected to push higher with total population reaching almost 26.8 million.

The new numbers pre-date many of the actions taken by the government to bring down total population growth, which reached a record 624,100 through 2022-23 – or more than 1700 a day. Eighty per cent of new residents, which included an increase of 106,100 in natural population (births minus deaths), were absorbed by Victoria, NSW, ACT and Queensland.

The Coalition has accused the government of running a “big Australia by stealth” policy, while the economy would have contracted by more than a percentage point over the past year without population growth.

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Since September, the government has closed the pandemic-event visa with 10,000 of these visa holders having already left the country. Another 36,000 of these visas are due to expire in the next three months.

More recent data has shown a sharp drop in international student visas which have accounted for much of the surge in population growth over the past two years. Student visa applications and approvals had, by February, fallen by more than a third over the past 12 months.