Subclass 030 Bridging C visa

A bridging visa can be granted long before it takes effect. A visa has effect as soon as it is granted unless it provides that it comes into effect on a later day or event [s 68(1)] [s 68(2)], and a bridging visa granted to a person who still holds a substantive visa typically sits dormant until that substantive visa ceases. It is never backdated to the lodgement of the underlying application, so a gap can open between lodging and the bridging visa taking effect.

Work rights, travel, and conditions follow the visa that is actually in effect, not the one merely granted. While a visitor, student, or other substantive visa remains in effect, its conditions control, and the dormant bridging visa's work rights do not activate. The validity of the underlying substantive application is a separate question from the bridging visa's date of effect: a valid application does not bring the date of effect forward.

The ordinary Bridging C route is for a person in Australia who does not hold a substantive visa but has lodged a valid onshore substantive application capable of supporting a bridging visa, either as the first Bridging C for that application or as a later one in respect of it [cl 030.212(2)] [cl 030.212(2A)]. The applicant must not hold a Bridging E and must not have held one since last holding a substantive visa [cl 030.211]. Two further routes exist: a further Bridging C where the decision maker is satisfied of a compelling need to work [cl 030.212(3)], and a judicial-review route for a Bridging C holder whose substantive application was refused while judicial-review proceedings are still running [cl 030.212(5)].

The conditions depend on the grant pathway. A grant under the compelling need to work route carries condition 8303 and/or 8501 only if the same condition applied to the Bridging C already held; otherwise no condition is imposed [cl 030.611]. The listed business, employer-sponsored and skilled routes carry no conditions [cl 030.613(1)]. The specified Subclass 103 and 143 routes carry conditions 8101 and 8501, together with condition 8303 if it applied to the most recent substantive visa [cl 030.613(2)]. Every residual case carries condition 8101 [cl 030.614].

A Bridging C has no travel-and-enter facility, so departure causes it to cease and the holder cannot rely on it to return [s 82(8)]. A Bridging C holder cannot obtain a Bridging B, because that class requires the applicant to already hold a Bridging A or B [cl 020.211].

Work rights follow the condition clause of the visa actually in effect. Under the special pathways in cl 010.611(1) to (3E), the Bridging A carries no conditions or specified conditions, but the residual case in cl 010.611(4) carries over the applicable conditions from the visa held at the time of application [cl 010.611]. A Bridging A on the no-work condition 8101 is not varied to permit work; the holder applies for a further Bridging A on a compelling need to work basis, which regulation 1.08 defines exhaustively as financial hardship [reg 1.08(a)] or a narrow Class UC / Subclass 457 nomination limb [reg 1.08(d)] [cl 010.211(4)]. That nomination limb was never extended to Subclass 482, so an approved 482 nomination does not establish the need – the practical route is financial hardship, and the travel-focused Bridging B's grant criteria contain no compelling-need limb at all [cl 020.211]-[cl 020.213].