What Is NOM? A Simple Guide to Australia's Migration Number and Your Visa Plans

News · 2026-08-26 · 5 min read

Are you thinking about moving to Australia? Maybe you want to study, take a skilled job, or try a working holiday. Before you book a flight, learn this short word: NOM. It stands for Net Overseas Migration. Every political party in Australia now talks about it. They argue about it, and they often describe it in different ways. If you understand what NOM counts, and why it is in the news so much, you can better guess where visa policy may go next.

NOM Without the Headlines

The basic idea is easy. NOM is the number of people who come to Australia and stay for at least a year, minus the number of people who leave Australia to live somewhere else. The way it is worked out, though, has more detail than a short political quote can show.

Australia counts people with a rule called the 12/16-month rule. A person does not need to stay for 12 months in a row. Instead, they are counted in NOM if they live in Australia for 12 months in total within any 16-month period. The time can be split over several visits. For example, a student who goes home for a month and then comes back can still be counted, as long as the total time in Australia adds up.

Who Is Counted and Who Is Not

Here is an important point: NOM does not only count foreign nationals. It also includes Australian citizens and permanent residents who return to live in Australia. It includes New Zealanders who move across the Tasman as well. These groups mostly move without a visa, so any government finds them much harder to control through visa rules.

Some people are left out. Diplomats and their families are not counted at all. Short-term workers in schemes such as the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) program are a mixed case. PALM brings farm workers from the Pacific, sometimes for only a few months. Whether they are counted depends only on how long their placement lasts.

Forecasts Keep Falling Short

The latest figures show NOM at about 301,000 for the year to December 2025. That is a big drop from the high point after the pandemic, which was around 556,000 in 2023. But it is still well above what the government itself had forecast.

Treasury expects NOM to fall to 225,000 by the 2027–28 financial year. In recent years, however, its forecasts have kept coming in lower than the real numbers. This is one reason NOM has become such a hot political topic. Promising a number is easy. Reaching it is much harder when a large part of the movement comes from returning citizens and New Zealanders, not from visa decisions.

Who Actually Arrived in Recent Figures

The total number tells only part of the story. It is more useful to look at the groups behind it. In the 2024–25 financial year, the arrivals adding to NOM looked like this:

International students were the biggest single group, at around 157,000. Most of them studied in higher education.
Skilled visa holders, both permanent and temporary, added about 86,000 people.
Working holiday-makers made up close to 78,000.
Family reunion visas accounted for around 24,000.
Humanitarian visas brought in just under 15,000.
Australian citizens coming home numbered 64,000.
New Zealand citizens numbered 53,000.

The last two groups are almost completely outside the control of visa policy.

How Each Party Plans to Bring the Number Down

Every major party now says it will reduce NOM. But some plans are much clearer than others.

One Nation's Target

One Nation has publicly set a NOM target of 130,000. Its message has not always been consistent. A newer MP said the party's "real" number could be closer to Treasury's forecast of 225,000, once PALM workers and aged care nurses were added back in. Senior party figures then took back those comments and repeated that 130,000 is the party's position. The areas it wants to cut include graduate visas, international student numbers and a tighter skilled migration list.

The Coalition and Housing

The Coalition has not chosen a fixed number. Instead, it wants to connect any future cap to how many homes are being built. There have been suggestions that the figure could be somewhere under 200,000. One senator named a figure of 180,000, aimed at working holiday, student and some skilled visas. Other party members quickly stepped away from that idea. Many regional and rural employers rely on working holiday-makers for seasonal work, which made the suggestion unpopular.

Labor and Enforcement

Labor has in practice taken Treasury's projection of 225,000 by 2028 as its working goal. Its focus is on enforcement rather than big visa cuts. That means making sure temporary visa holders really leave when their visas end. In the meantime, it is also slowing the processing of working holiday and skilled visa applications.

Planning Your Move From Indonesia With This in Mind

If you are thinking about working or studying in Australia, the NOM total is not the most important thing to watch. What matters more are the visa types that politicians want to tighten. Student visas, graduate visas, working holiday visas and parts of the skilled visa list are all under close political attention. This means processing times, eligibility rules and yearly caps in these streams are more likely to change soon than areas like family reunion or humanitarian visas.

Real migration numbers have often been very different from government forecasts. So treat any announced "target" as a sign of direction, not a promise. Follow the real policy details when they are released, and pay less attention to political speeches.

For anyone hoping to work in Australia from Indonesia, good preparation always helps. Keep an English-language CV ready. Book an English test such as IELTS or PTE if your visa or employer asks for one. Get your Indonesian documents translated into English when the rules require it. Being ready early means you can act quickly when the rules become clear.

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