Visit Australia for tourism, to see family and friends, or for short-term business activities
The Tourist (offshore) stream is the standard Visitor visa for people travelling to Australia for a holiday, to see family or friends, on a cruise, or for any other non-business leisure reason.
You have to be outside Australia when you apply and when the visa is decided.
IMMI typically grants stays of 3, 6, or 12 months, depending on your travel history, ties to your home country, and the strength of your application.
No work is allowed. Up to 3 months of study is allowed in most cases. The visa can be single or multiple entry.
Most people who don't qualify for the ETA or eVisitor end up using this stream.
These are the published requirements for the 600. Check each one applies to your situation.
IMMI attaches the 8503 condition to many Visitor visas, especially for applicants from countries with higher visa-overstay rates.
If 8503 is on your visa, you can't apply for almost any other Australian visa while you're inside Australia. You also can't extend the Visitor visa or switch to a Student or Partner visa from onshore.
The usual way around it is to leave Australia and apply for the next visa from offshore.
In rare cases you can apply for an 8503 waiver. That's granted only in tightly-defined circumstances (a major change in circumstances since arrival).
Always read your grant letter to see if 8503 is attached.
The Business Visitor stream gets the most ambiguous use.
What's allowed: attending a conference, going to meetings, negotiating a contract, doing a tour of a potential supplier, doing brief unpaid observation in someone's workplace.
What's not allowed: doing actual paid work, providing professional services to an Australian client, replacing a local worker, running a business in Australia, or anything that looks like employment.
People who use a Business Visitor visa to work informally for an Australian business put their future visa applications at risk.
The Frequent Traveller visa gives you 10 years of multi-entry access to Australia.
The application fee is much higher than the Tourist stream, which puts off a lot of people on first read.
But for someone who actually does come to Australia every year (Indonesian or Chinese business travellers, Singaporean parents visiting kids, frequent ASEAN visitors), the per-trip cost falls below the Tourist visa fee inside two or three visits.
The stream is open only to citizens of 11 specific countries. Each stay is capped at 3 months, even though the visa is valid for 10 years.
IMMI can require a security bond from the sponsor on the Sponsored Family stream.
The bond amount is set by IMMI on a case-by-case basis and can be several thousand dollars per visitor.
The bond is held by IMMI for the duration of the visit and refunded when the visitor leaves Australia on time and without breaching visa conditions. It can be forfeited if the visitor overstays or breaches conditions.
Many applicants are caught out by the bond requirement and find out about the amount only after they've committed to the application.
