The Section 48 Bar
Section 48 of the Migration Act 1958 is one of the most consequential provisions most applicants have never heard of — until it applies to them. In broad terms: a person in Australia who does not hold a substantive visa, and who has had a visa application refused or a visa cancelled since they last entered, is barred from applying for most other visas while they remain onshore. What follows is general information about how the bar works. Every real case turns on its own facts and dates.
When the bar applies
Three things must be true at once: the person is in Australia; they do not hold a substantive visa (a bridging visa is not one); and since last entering, a visa application has been refused or a visa has been cancelled. The bar attaches to the person, not to the application — it does not matter that the refusal was for a different visa type, or that circumstances have since changed. It also catches people who were included in someone else’s refused application. The common shock is timing: a person on a bridging visa after a refusal is usually barred at exactly the moment they most want to lodge something new.
What can still be lodged onshore
The bar is not absolute. The regulations prescribe classes of visa that can still be applied for onshore despite section 48 — among them partner visas, protection visas, bridging visas, child visas, and medical treatment visas. Since November 2021, three skilled visas have joined the list: the 190 Skilled Nominated, the 491 Skilled Work Regional, and the 494 employer-sponsored regional visa — each of which still requires a state or territory nomination or an employer sponsor, so the exception is real but not automatic. Which of these is genuinely open in a given case is precisely the question that needs careful, honest assessment.
What the bar does not do
Section 48 does not take away the right to seek merits review of the refusal itself — the Administrative Review Tribunal deadlines run separately, and they are short. It does not prevent applications lodged from outside Australia. And it ends when the person leaves: the bar applies only while onshore. But departure is not a clean reset. Leaving usually means applying again from offshore with a refusal on the record, sometimes needing a bridging visa that permits return, and always weighing whether the next application is actually stronger than the last. The bar lifting is not the same thing as the problem being solved.
Review, reapply, or depart
A person facing the bar usually has three directions available: seek review of the refusal within the deadline, lodge one of the excepted visas onshore if the requirements can genuinely be met, or leave and rebuild from offshore. Each forecloses parts of the others, and the review deadline is almost always the first thing to expire. The order in which these are considered matters more than any of them individually — which is why the practice’s first step with any refusal is to establish the section 48 position and the review deadline before anything else is discussed.