Subclass 010 Bridging A 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 A route attaches to a pending substantive application lodged in Australia while the applicant held a substantive visa [cl 010.211(2)]. On that route the substantive-visa-at-application requirement is strict: a person whose only visa at lodgement was itself a bridging visa generally cannot ground a fresh Bridging A on the new application. Other subclauses reach applicants who do not fit that route: a judicial-review continuation for a former Bridging A or B holder [cl 010.211(3)], a compelling-need-to-work grant [cl 010.211(4)], and dedicated partner and aged-parent routes tied to a regulation 2.21A grant [cl 010.211(5)] [cl 010.211(6)].

A Bridging A can sit dormant behind a substantive visa still in force; while that visa remains in effect its conditions control, and the dormant Bridging A's work rights do not activate.

Departure is the critical constraint. A Bridging A permits the holder to remain in, but not re-enter, Australia, and it ceases on departure [s 82(8)] – leaving and returning on the underlying substantive visa does not keep the Bridging A on foot. A holder who needs to travel should obtain a Bridging B before departure; once a Bridging A has ceased offshore, the person generally needs another visa to enter and must satisfy the criteria again from inside Australia. Its cease timetable after refusal, ART decision, withdrawal, or invalidity is set by the subclass clauses [cl 010.511] [cl 010.513].

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].