Student visa work hours: condition 8105 and what a breach does

MARN 1576536

The condition

Condition 8105 provides that the holder must not engage in work in Australia before the course has commenced, and once it has commenced must not work more than 48 hours in a fortnight while the course is in session, other than work that is a registered component of the course. The grant notice lists it; VEVO shows it. It attaches to the primary student, and a parallel condition, 8104, attaches to dependants. The limit was 40 hours until 1 July 2023, and older guidance still circulates; the current figure is 48.

In session and in breaks

The limit applies while the course is in session, which means the teaching periods and examination periods shown on the provider's published calendar, including the period between a deferred exam and its result. During a scheduled break, such as the period between semesters or the summer break published in the calendar, there is no limit. The break has to be the provider's break, not yours: a week in which you have no classes but the course is in session is in session, and the time between completing one course and starting another is treated as in session unless the provider's calendar says otherwise. The calendar is the evidence, and the Department reads it against your payroll dates.

Counting the fortnight

A fortnight is a period of 14 days starting on a Monday. The limit is 48 hours in any such fortnight, not an average over a term and not 24 hours a week. Thirty hours in one week and twenty in the next is 50 in that fortnight and is a breach, even though the following fortnight might be 40. The only safe method is a log kept by Monday-to-Sunday weeks, across every job, and checked before extra shifts are accepted. Employers rarely keep it for you, and two employers never add their hours together.

What counts as work

• All paid work, across every employer, including casual shifts, cash work and work for a family business.
• Work on an ABN: rideshare, delivery, freelancing, contracting. It is work, it is reported to the tax office as income, and it is counted by the hours it takes.
• Unpaid work that an employer would otherwise pay for, such as regular unpaid shifts in a shop or restaurant, is work.
• Not counted: a placement or practicum that is a registered, mandatory component of the course, shown on the course's registration; genuine volunteering for a non-profit organisation with no expectation of payment, of the kind an Australian would do unpaid.

Where a placement is paid, it is still excluded if it is a registered course component. Where work experience is arranged by the student outside the course, it counts.

Dependants: condition 8104

A partner or child included on a student visa holds condition 8104: no work until the student's course has commenced, then no more than 48 hours in a fortnight, with no unlimited period in breaks. The exception is the dependant of a student in a masters by coursework, masters by research or doctoral degree, who may work unlimited hours once the course has started. A dependant who moves from a bachelor-level student to a masters-level student gets the exception from the new course, not before.

How breaches are found

The Department runs a data-matching program with the Australian Taxation Office under which visa holders' tax records, including single-touch payroll reporting from employers and income reported against an ABN, are matched to visa and course data. A student whose payroll shows 60 hours in a fortnight during a teaching period is identified without anyone having complained. Providers also report, and employers found to have employed students beyond the limit are themselves liable. The practical point is that the breach exists in records the student does not control, and the question when it is found is what the student does next.

If you have breached it

A breach is a ground for cancellation under section 116 of the Act. Cancellation is discretionary, not automatic: the Department issues a notice of intention to consider cancellation, invites a response, and weighs the extent of the breach, the reasons, the consequences of cancellation and the person's circumstances. A single fortnight over by a few hours during a financial emergency is weighed differently from a year of full-time work. The response to the notice is the moment that decides it, and it is built on evidence, not apology; the cancellation notice guide covers it. A student who has breached and has not yet been asked should stop the excess hours now, keep the records that explain the period, and get advice before the next application, because that application will ask.

The next visa

The 485, a further student visa, a partner visa and an employer-sponsored visa all ask whether the applicant has complied with the conditions of their visas, and most carry a criterion about substantial compliance. A breach of 8105 that was never actioned is still on the record, and the next application is where it surfaces. Disclosed and explained, it is usually survivable; concealed and discovered, it becomes a false-information problem under PIC 4020, which is the one that bars visas for three years. The route from student to work visa is set out in student visa ending: the options, and a compliance history is the first thing checked against it.

Book a consultation — $330 inc. GST, credited

General information only, current at October 2026; not advice on your own case. Conditions 8104 and 8105, Schedule 8 of the Migration Regulations 1994, as in force at the date above. Outcomes depend on the Department’s assessment of each application; no registered migration agent can guarantee a result (Code of Conduct, Migration Agents Regulations). Keshab Chapagain, MARN 1576536.