Between 60,000 – 70,000 of the 140,000 New Zealanders holding the Special Category Visa will find it easier to gain Australian citizenship from 1 July 2017, the Australian Prime Minister announced on Friday.

Early details indicate that applicants will have to provide evidence that they have lived and worked in Australia for at least five years or more and during that time earned income in excess of the temporary skills migration income threshold, which now is about $54,000 a year.

Prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, announced the “new pathways to citizenship” after hosting a meeting with his counterpart, John Key, in Sydney on Friday.

Speaking at a media conference, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said the deal was in response to advocacy “for the plight of New Zealanders living in Australia who have been in a particular category that hasn’t allowed them to become Australian citizens”.

Joanne Cox, of New Zealand advocacy group Oz Kiwi, said the group was "cautious" about the announcement until further detail was available but said it looked like a "tool to screen out the poor," because many New Zealanders would fail to meet requirements.

"It will be a pathway for a number of people who have arrived since 2001 to access to permanent residency and citizenship, so that’s a win," she said. "But for every win there’s a loss."

"[For] those people who will not have earned sufficient income over the last five years, it’s going to be similar to a skilled visa by the sounds of things and many New Zealanders aren’t eligible for a skilled visa because they don’t work in the right fields."

Desperate to avoid extradition to Malaysia where he will face the death penalty, the man convicted of murder amidst allegations that he was ordered to kill a Mongolian socialite at the centre of a high-level corruption scandal allegedly involving the Prime Minister of Malaysia, has threatened to somehow implicate the RMA who has been providing him migration advice that could save his life.

Sirul Azhar Umar, a former body guard of the prime minister, said he was acting under orders when in 2006 he twice shot 28-year-old translator Altantuya Shaariibuu in the head as she begged for the life of her unborn child and then wrapped her body with military explosives and blew her up.

Sirul fled to Australia last year just before the Malaysian Federal Court sentenced him to death by hanging. The efforts by the Malaysian authorities to extradite him were hampered by existing Australian legislation prohibiting the extradition of individuals to countries with the death penalty.

RMA Robert Chelliah has been assisting Sirul who is currently being held at Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre. It has been reported that Mr Chelliah advised Sirul the only way to secure his residency in Australia was to secure a protection visa by revealing to immigration whose orders he was following, and to convince them it was an error of judgment committed due to external conditions beyond his control.

Recent statistics indicate that of 35,000 who are eligible for this visa only about 15 per cent actually bothered to apply for the visa which grants full work rights in Australia.

Data from the Immigration Department indicates that, of the 35,127 graduates who held a 573 visa on March 15 last year, just 5836 pursued the 485 visa — known as post-study work rights visa — on December 31, according to a report in The Australian.

Of those, just 4685 were still in Australia, the rest overseas. Are students unware of their rights, or are the job prospects here so poor that they have to return home. There are even suggestions that the $1470 visa application charge has become concern for some students.

Complaining that an increased population would not spread out across the Australian continent but instead concentrate in the narrow fertile strip along the east coast, former NSW Premier and Foreign Minister under the Labor government has made a plea to drastically cut Australia’s migration program.

Media reports did not indicate what type of research or economic modelling Mr Bob Carr based his notions on when he took a swipe at current policies which take in about 190,000 permanent migrants a year.

Mr Carr said the country's population was far greater than "what we need and what we can absorb, environmentally and economically…And it's based on a flawed economic model — that is, we need to build up a domestic population.” Mr Carr's comments came after Australia's population officially hit 24 million shortly after midnight on Tuesday.

Speaking to the media in Sydney, Mr Carr chose to compare Australia to Indonesia stating that, "Our rate of population growth is higher than that of Indonesia, which has got developing-world status.” He made no mention that the median age in Indonesia is about 28 years with life expectancy of 71 years and a fertility rate of 2.47. In Australia the median age about 38 years with life expectancy at 82 years and a fertility rate well under replacement levels and at its lowest levels in 10 years.

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The number of undocumented workers in Australia is estimated to be in excess of 100,000. The potential pool of visa holders with no or limited work rights is huge, including millions of visitors and students. Their circumstances, leave many of them thinking that they are without rights to the wages and conditions enjoyed by the rest of the workforce, and allow them to be exploited by unscrupulous employers, according to an article in The Conversation.

This is a growing phenomenon, but not a new one. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) reports a 10% increase in visa overstayers in the two years to 2013, to 62,700. 

In 2011, the federal government-commissioned Howells review described non-citizens working without permission as, “in simple numerical terms … the most significant problem facing Australian immigration authorities”.

A recent landmark study on overseas workers has revealed that almost four out five Chinese student visa workers in Sydney are paid below the minimum wage, with two out of five paid just $12 an hour or less. The study found that all those working as waiters were underpaid.

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