Topic: Australia’s New Wage Theft Law (2025)’s impact on migrant workers, focusing on international students in Australian Universties who work on a student visa

Brista working  Source: “Brista” by adactio [Flickr] is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Topic: Australia’s New Wage Theft Law (2025)’s impact on migrant workers, focusing on international students in Australian Universties who work on a student visa.

Title: Will Australia’s New Wage Theft Law (2025) Provides Further Protection for International University Students Working on a Student Visa?

Genre: News Commentary

Target Publication: The Australian (Commentary Section)

Reporting Angle: This commentary argues that while Australia’s New Wage Theft Law (which took effect on 1 Janurary 2025) that criminalizes employers for underpaying employees (eg. Workers work overtime but not getting paid), its effects on International Students may be limited as it’s common for migrant workers to not report wage theft because of the fear of visa cancellation. Thus, it requires a reform in legislation and support from Government institutions such as Fair Work Ombudsman to address such fear so that the Wage Theft Law could really protect vulnerable migrant workers in Australia.

Target User Group:

The commentary targets

-Migrant workers (especially international university students).

They are the primary audience who will care about how the new law affects them.

-Educators in Australian Universities.

They may have students working as visa holders and wonder how they could be affected by the law.

-Universities

They may read the article because they want to know how they can better support International students.

-Immigration offices

They could read the article because they are interested in how to improve policies that could protect migrant workers.

-Fair Work Ombudsman

They protect the rights of all workers in Australia, and they could read the article to think of ways to support migrant workers without visa cancellations.

Sources of Information

Primary source: Interview

Proposed Interviewees

• International university students who currently work or has worked under their students visa and gather their experiences.
• Universty’s Careers Center (eg. University of Sydney’s career counsellors) and ask them about what common issues that International students are having when working.
• Staff who works in Fair Work Ombudsman and aske them about how could FWO support migrant workers in avoiding visa cancellations.

Secondary sources

• Sections of Wage Theft Law
• Student Visa’s Work Restrictions
• Public and Government Data and survey results that report on the prevelance of wage theft among migrant workers and international students.
• Mainstream media (eg. ABC) News that report on migrant worker’s experience with wage theft
• Social Media posts that document migrant worker’s challenge in Australia

Ideas for Multimedia, hypertext and Interactivity

• Multimedia:

-YouTube Video that documents Australian International Students’ Working Conditions

-Images of International Students’ working in poor conditions

– Reports, surveys or polls’ data on wage theft prevelance among international students as well as migrant workers

• Hypertext:

Hyperlinks will be added to key terms that directs to reports, surveys, polls, government sites, and mainstream media.

• Interactivity:

-A social media poll link will be provided to increase reader’s engagement on the issue and ask the readers to share their views on the Work Theft Law.