Campaign Platform

Issue - What is the problem?

Migrants to Australia have to meet health requirements, designed:

  • to minimise the impact of planned migration on the health care system and community services;

  • to prevent the spread of contagious diseases; and

  • to protect Australia’s public health.

While accepting the need to protect public health, we believe the current migration health requirements discriminate against individuals with disability or health issues based on assumptions around ‘cost to the community’ which are at odds with the rights and capacities of individuals with disability or with health issues.

Read our Position Statement.


The Campaign

This campaign calls for review of the existing migration provisions to identify a way that a migration health requirement can be enforced without discriminating against people with disability migrating to Australia. The foundation of this campaign is that our current migration health requirements and their application are inconsistent with international human rights law, as expressed in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (CRPD) and with Australia’s own Disability Discrimination Act.

We also believe there should be a clear and transparent relationship between government expenditure on the average Australian for health and welfare, and the so-called ‘significant’ cost figure used for screening out migrants.

Our Campaign has achieved some of our major goals. 

  • In 2024, the government removed the need for children born to temporary residents and ordinarily resident in Australia to meet the MHR if their families subsequently applied for permanent residence.  Previously, the birth of a child with a disability or health condition had been a huge impediment to families who were already working in Australia on a temporary basis and who would otherwise have been eligible for permanent residence.

  • We have contributed submissions to the Review of the Significant Cost Threshold and to the Disability Royal Commission and will be contributing to the Attorney General’s review of the Disability Discrimination Act (October 2025).

  • We are participating in ongoing dialogue with both the Department of Home Affairs and Attorney General’s Department, and with the Greens and a number of cross benchers in discussing policy positions and advocating for change.

  • Our leadership in this area is widely recognised:  our Open Letter on the migration health requirement (March 2023) was signed by over one hundred signatories from peak disability bodies and other public advocates; and our recent submission to the Review of the SCT was endorsed by over 70 organisations and experts in disability and health.

  • We regularly issue media statements on migration health matters and are frequently approached by the media, in Australia and internationally, for comment.

  • We have over 350 supporters who receive regular updates on our Campaign.





Background information

There has been sustained media coverage of cases where a person or family member has been denied a temporary or permanent visa to Australia on the basis of their disability or because of a health issue.

The Migration Regulations 1994, under the Migration Act 1958 impose a health requirement on all migrants and their dependents, and on all temporary visitors and residents. Schedule 4 of the Regulations sets out public interest criteria which require that visa applicants be free from a disease or condition that would require health care or community services, the cost of which would be ‘significant’. This is assessed over the duration or time frame of the temporary visa; or for a permanent visa, over five years for a short term condition, or over ten years for a permanent condition. Where that requirement for health care or community services would result in a ‘significant’ cost (currently $86 000, at August 2025) to the Australian community, the applicant fails the health requirement and the visa may be refused.

These costs are assessed on the basis of services which would be made available to an Australian citizen or permanent resident. The costs for services are assessed even where an applicant does not actually require the use of those services; it is enough that their condition could meet the medical criteria for use of a service.

The incredibly broad operation of this law means that it can be extremely difficult for a person with a disability or a health issue to meet the health requirement for a visa to enter or remain in Australia.

Legal protection under the Disability Discrimination Act is not available to migrants because any action permitted under the Migration Act is exempt from the operation of the Disability Discrimination Act.

The operation of the Migration Act and Migration Regulations was subject to an inquiry in 2010 by the Joint Standing Committee on Migration, which resulted in the report Enabling Australia: Inquiry into the Migration Treatment of Disability. The report provided extensive analysis and commentary on the laws, now subject to significant public scrutiny; but most of the 18 recommendations of that report remain either unimplemented or only partially addressed.

The September 2019 UN Report on Australia's Review of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (CRPD) recommended that Australia

“review and amend migration laws and policies to ensure persons with disabilities do not face discrimination in any of the formalities and procedures relating to migration and asylum, especially remove the exemption in the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 to certain provisions of the Migration Act.”

As a party to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), Australia has an obligation to take all appropriate measures to modify or abolish existing laws and regulations that constitute discrimination against persons with disabilities.[2] The continued existence in the Migration Act and Migration Regulations of provisions which discriminate against persons with disabilities, violates this obligation. Further, Australian migration laws interfere with two articles of the CRPD (as relevant):

 Article 5

  1. States Parties recognise that all persons are equal before and under the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law.

  2. States Parties shall prohibit all discrimination on the basis of disability and guarantee to persons with disabilities equal and effective legal protection against discrimination on all grounds.

  3. In order to promote equality and eliminate discrimination, States Parties shall take all appropriate steps to ensure that reasonable accommodation is provided.

  4. Specific measures which are necessary to accelerate or achieve de facto equality of persons with disabilities shall not be considered discrimination under the terms of the present Convention.

Article 18

  1. States Parties shall recognise the rights of persons with disabilities to liberty of movement, to freedom to choose their residence and to a nationality, on an equal basis with others, including by ensuring that persons with disabilities:

a) Have the right to acquire and change a nationality and are not deprived of their nationality arbitrarily or on the basis of disability;

b) Are not deprived, on the basis of disability, of their ability to obtain, possess and utilize documentation of their nationality or other documentation of identification, or to utilize relevant processes such as immigration proceedings, that may be needed to facilitate exercise of the right to liberty of movement;

c) Are free to leave any country, including their own;

In our view, article 18 does not, in and of itself give rise to the right for a person with disability to migrate to Australia. However, the current health requirement enshrined in the Migration Act and Regulations does violate article 5 of the CRPD as a law which does not treat people with disabilities on an equal basis with others.

 It is noted that an Interpretative Declaration lodged by Australia when ratifying the CRPD provides:

“Australia recognises the rights of persons with disability to liberty of movement, to freedom to choose their residence and to a nationality, on an equal basis with others. Australia further declares its understanding that the Convention does not create a right for a person to enter or remain in a country of which he or she is not a national, nor impact on Australia’s health requirements for non-nationals seeking to enter or remain in Australia, where these requirements are based on legitimate, objective and reasonable criteria.[2]”



Data on the cost of migrants with disabilities or health requirements

Other than protecting public health, the main argument used in support of the current health requirement concerns notional costs to the community. 

In 2018, the Canadian government undertook an exercise in quantifying migration health costs across federal and provincial health jurisdictions and determined that, contrary to widely held belief, the cost of admitting migrants with disability and health issues did not impact significantly on state budgets compared to the costs of other migrants and Canadian residents. The Canadian government consequently reviewed its migration health requirements in line with contemporary international attitudes toward the rights of people with health and disability issues.

As part of any meaningful review of the health requirements, a similar audit should be conducted in Australia to ascertain the actual costs of permitting individuals with health and disability issues to enter Australia. While cost should not be the sole determinant of policy in this area, a realistic understanding of the actual costs of migrants with health and disability issues in comparison to any Australian resident, is an essential starting point for assessing the impact on Australia’s health and community services and, as in Canada, would serve as a more realistic basis for setting the threshold for ‘significant costs’.

At present, the so-called Significant Cost Threshold for migration (SCT), $86,000 over a maximum of ten years, is out of step with the equivalent health cost threshold of both New Zealand and Canada, and in fact with the Australian government’s own expenditure for disability and health services as measured by the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare (AIHW)