Budget 2018: Child migrants get five years to register for English lessons

Budget 2018: A department official told SBS News the change fixes an “anomaly” in the program that offers government-funded English lessons.

Primary school students in Brisbane. Source: AAP

More on Budget 2018: 

• Winners and losers
• Refugees to wait twice as long for job search services
• Migrants to wait four years for Centrelink in welfare crackdown
• Government to claw back $300m from welfare debtors
• Visas for foreign doctors cut in $400m saving to health system
• Turnbull government's Indigenous strategy blasted
• Churches win exemption from paying for Aussie apprenticeships

Migrants aged under 18 will have five years, instead of one, to apply for their 510 hours of government-funded English lessons after they arrive in Australia.

Adult migrants already have five years, and the reasons for the discrepancy were unclear, even to government officials.

A spokesperson for the Education Department told SBS News the change, announced in the 2018 Budget, was “correcting an anomaly in the legislative instrument”.

The extension will not impose any new cost on the Budget bottom line.

It will take effect in October without the need for the government to pass a new law.