{"id":628330,"date":"2026-09-18T07:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T07:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/628330\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T07:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T07:52:11","slug":"australia-to-detain-tourists-who-overstay-visa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/628330\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia to detain tourists who overstay visa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia will detain tourists who overstay visas to send a message of deterrence under new rules aimed at reducing levels of migration, a government minister has said.<\/p>\n

Australia’s ruling Labour party has denied it is tightening visa rules in response to the rise of the far-right One Nation, which has become one of the country’s most popular parties this year with pledges to drastically slash migration.<\/p>\n

Under reforms announced yesterday, Australia will stop family members accompanying students, introduce ballots for working holidaymakers and crack down on overstayers.<\/p>\n

Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs Matt Thistlethwaite said tourists would be put in immigration detention to reduce the level of visa overstayers, which has risen to 77,000.<\/p>\n

“Once the word gets around, ‘hey, I overstayed on my tourist visa for a couple of weeks, I got picked up and I spent a couple of weeks in immigration detention, it’s not a nice place, I’m going home’. Once that gets around, then we think that obviously that deterrence will ensure that people abide by the conditions,” he told broadcaster News24.<\/p>\n

\"Assistant
\nMatt Thistlethwaite said there would be consequences for overstayers<\/p>\n

People who do not have the right to remain in Australia will face a “consequence” and be removed, he added.<\/p>\n

Since 2015, Australia’s immigration detention centres have held with people with criminal convictions awaiting deportation after a policy change that saw mandatory cancellation of permanent visas for certain criminal offences.<\/p>\n

Immigration Minister Tony Burke, announcing the new policy, said the government would open 250 beds and add 100 compliance officers to house the visa overstayers in different facilities.<\/p>\n

Australian Tourism Industry Council chief executive Erin McLeod said talk of detaining tourists was not good for Australia’s image.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think it does our reputation as a welcoming destination any good and can become quite damaging – tourism is an important part of the Australian economy,” she said.<\/p>\n

The council represents thousands of small tourism businesses.<\/p>\n

Refugee Council of Australia director of policy Rebecca Eckard said the move raised safety and legal concerns.<\/p>\n

“It is being framed as punitive to change behaviour. The use of punitive detention is not permitted under Australia’s immigration act,” she said.<\/p>\n

“There has been a major problem with immigration detention,” she added, pointing to concerns raised by the government ombudsman over insufficient staffing and healthcare access.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia will detain tourists who overstay visas to send a message of deterrence under new rules aimed at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-628330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}