Answering community calls to reform the carer visa
In 2023, the Sydney Policy Lab’s Australia Cares project held People’s Assemblies on Care in Westmead and Broken Hill to support community members to identify and articulate the care challenges and solutions that mattered to them most.
Participants at the Westmead Assembly, many of whom had experience of the migration system, identified issues with carer visas as a reform priority that would help make care systems work for them. In a new working paper, Reforming the Carer Visa: Community-Centred Policy Options (pdf, 1MB), University of Sydney experts connect the testimony of Assembly participants with the current immigration policy context and make recommendations for reform.
Listening to community priorities
At the Assembly, community members viewed existing parent visa options as unsuitable for Australian residents seeking extended care from their parents, in large part because of the exceedingly long processing times and visa costs. In the Australia Cares report, a proposed policy solution recommended that the Government:
Create a new carer visa category that has clear categories for qualification. For example, to provide care to a family member who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, has been significantly injured in an accident or has been told by their doctor to be on bed rest during pregnancy. This could also enable caring for a young child.
Reforming the Carer Visa, authored by Sian Perry (Lecturer in Gender and Global Governance), Associate Professor Anna Boucher (Public Policy), Professor Brendan McCormack (Academic Chair of the CARE Program) and Dr Kate Harrison Brennan (Director, Sydney Policy Lab), evidences the critiques by migrant community groups of the existing carer visa’s restrictive eligibility criteria, complex application process and lengthy processing times.
“There are clear issues in both the design and the approximately eight-year processing backlog of the existing carer visa,” says Perry. “In the paper, we propose a two-prong solution. First, to address outstanding visa issues and, second, to create a new temporary visa stream.”
“The Lab’s CARE Program is pleased to continue work on the policy priorities community members shared at the Westmead Assembly,” says Professor McCormack.
“This working paper is one outcome of our commitment to community-led policymaking. Engaging in these practices ensures seemingly intransigent societal challenges, such as care support, can be looked at afresh and with the potential of place-based solutions emerging.”
Recommendations
Finding that the carer visa “cannot meet the needs of Australian migrant communities with complex care needs” the authors recommend the Commonwealth Government:
- increase the current cap on the carer visa
- reduce the backlog for both visa classes
- simplify the application process for the carer visa
- loosen the criteria of the carer visa
- introduce a new temporary carer visa.
The Policy Lab’s Championing Australia’s Relational Economy program seeks to elevate care in society through exploratory and applied research that embeds person-centred principles, values and practices in Australian public policy.
Building on the success of Australia Cares, the Program is an umbrella for the Lab’s multidisciplinary, community-centred research across the lifespan, working with expertise in the community and from across the University of Sydney.