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IMMIGRATION POLICY UNDER THE HOWARD GOVERNMENT
Open accessAbstract
Up until 1989 Australian immigration policy was based on Ministerial discretion. This gave the executive the power to decide policy without review either by parliament or the courts. But during the 1980s the context changed. Many more would‐be immigrants were already on Australian soil on a temporary basis and, if they were rejected, they could appeal to the courts. Ministerial discretion was hard to defend in court and selection criteria were progressively widened by court judgments. The Hawke Government compounded these difficulties by a number of unwise policy decisions. By 1996 the immigration program that the Howard Government inherited lacked a clear economic rationale, was dominated by family reunion, brought in many migrants who needed welfare support and was open to fraud. It was also unpopular. The Howard/Ruddock reforms sharpened the program's economic focus, reduced the size of the family‐reunion component, restricted new migrants' access to welfare and increased the program's integrity. The new Government also took a firm stance on border control and tried to limit the role of the courts. Many of these reforms have been controversial but, by 2002, immigration was much less unpopular than it had been in 1996.
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“In the 1980s, the family reunion rules introduced a ' family balance test ' , 6 and ' assurance of support ' 7 requirement to restrict the numbers of parent migrants; followed by a cap on parent visas and the introduction of contributory parent visas in the 2000s (Betts 2003).”
From Conditioning grandparent care-labour mobility at the care-migration systems nexus: Australia and the UK (2024) · cites this paper as Betts 2003
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No references could be resolved yet.
Research works printed but not linked: 41
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Cited by
Kilkey, M., & Baldassar, L. (2024) · Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies · doi:10.1080/1369183x.2023.2279732 · Cited by 15
“In the 1980s, the family reunion rules introduced a ‘ family balance test ’ , 6 and ‘ assurance of support ’ 7 requirement to restrict the numbers of parent migrants; followed by a cap on parent visas and the introduction of contributory parent visas in the 2000s (Betts 2003).”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Betts, K.
- Corresponding author
- Betts, Katharine
- Venue
- Australian Journal of Social Issues
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2003-05
- Volume
- 38
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 169-192
- ISSN
- 0157-6321 (ISSN-L)
- 1839-4655
- OpenAlex
- W1576063970
- Cited by
- 39
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 3
- FWCI
- 3.91
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- figshare.com
- Locations
- Australian Journal of Social Issues (publishedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Swinburne figshare (Swinburne University of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Swinburne figshare (Swinburne University of Technology)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Migration, Refugees, and Integration
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Migration and Labor Dynamics
- Social Sciences › Law › Immigration Law and Human Rights
- Keywords
- immigration policy, Howard government, ministerial discretion, family reunification, welfare dependency, immigration fraud, border control, Australian immigration history
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: IMMIGRATION POLICY UNDER THE HOWARD GOVERNMENT. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1002/j.1839-4655.2003.tb01141.x
- The paper
- Betts, K. (2003). IMMIGRATION POLICY UNDER THE HOWARD GOVERNMENT. Australian Journal of Social Issues. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1839-4655.2003.tb01141.x
