Australia’s migration system is increasingly looking less like a carefully calibrated policy framework and more like a series of ad hoc, knee-jerk responses to avoid dealing with a political problem.
The latest move is another quiet decision by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke to effectively pause the processing of Working Holiday Maker visas, adding yet another temporary migration category to a growing list caught in the government’s effort to bring Net Overseas Migration (‘NOM’) down.
The pause is another example of the government using visa processing pauses and selective prioritisation settings to achieve their self-imposed NOM targets. As the ABC reported on Saturday, offshore skilled visa applicants outside defence and law enforcement have effectively been pushed to the back of the queue, with nurses and teachers among those now facing waits of up to 12 months for a visa application decision. The Australian Industry Group described the change as moving applicants from a post-COVID “fast lane” to an “emergency stopping lane”.
The Working Holiday program has become deeply intertwined with the fortunes of rural and regional Australia. For years, the prospect of a second or third visa has encouraged backpackers to head beyond the capital cities and into orchards, vineyards and farms, where they fill seasonal jobs that can be difficult to staff locally. Agriculture is one of the key industries in which Working Holiday Makers undertake specified work, including harvesting and packing fruit and vegetables.
The scale is significant: government analysis found that Working Holiday Makers performed more than 4.1 million days of specified work in 2022–23, equivalent to roughly 16,000 full-time workers, much of it in agriculture. That means the consequences of a prolonged visa pause will extend well beyond backpacker hostels in Bondi and St Kilda. They will be felt in the orchards and vineyards of regional Australia, where a shortage of seasonal workers can mean crops are left unpicked, prices rise, and regional businesses lose the spending generated by thousands of young travellers spending months (and dollars) in their communities each year.
As we know, and as the ABC also reports, the government is targeting a reduction in NOM from around 300,000 currently to Labor’s target of 225,000 by 2028. The Working Holiday Maker pause is part of that broader effort to achieve that target.
From Canberra, working holiday makers have become another lever in the migration toolbox.
This is causing real frustration and consternation in regional areas. We’ve heard already from the LNP with Senator Susan McDonald, Shadow Minister For Resources, stating “regional Australia stops without working backpackers.” She pointed out that these Working Holiday Makers “fill genuine seasonal shortages that businesses simply cannot fill locally” and that for Australian farmers that these workers are the “difference between getting a crop to market and watching it rot.”
The frustration and consternation are also being felt in Australia’s English language sector.
The ELICOS connection
Working Holiday Makers are not simply backpackers passing through Australia. For many English language colleges, particularly outside the major capital cities, they are an important part of the student body mix.
In their recently released Annual ELICOS Market Report, English Australia showed that Working Holiday Visa holders represented 11% of all ELICOS students in 2025. The figure was 15% for QLD where there are more regional ELICOS centres.
That makes the visa pause significant for a sector that has already spent several years taking the full force of policy changes and visa uncertainty causing substantial declines in international student demand. Independent ELICOS visa applications were hit particularly hard by the student visa application charge hikes. Ian Aird, CEO of English Australia, has previously written for the Koala and showed that the increase from $710 to $1,600 caused a drop of 35% in applications and the increase to $2,000 saw a further 25% fall. The recent data from DHA showed that FY25-26 saw 22% fewer Independent ELICOS applications than the previous year which was 50% lower than pre-COVID and 20% lower than the number of applications 20 years ago.
ELICOS providers are ever resilient and have gotten busy finding new markets. “Many English schools, particularly those operating in regional areas, have placed greater emphasis on catering to Working Holiday Makers,” said Ian Pratt, CEO of Lexis English.
The major markets include Japan, Korea, Taiwan, France and Germany, with Italy also contributing.
For Asian Working Holiday students, English language study is a particularly common way to start their stay. European Working Holiday Makers are less likely to study English but remain an important source of the broad nationality mix vital to quality ELICOS providers.
And this is where the policy creates an interesting contradiction.
The government has repeatedly framed its migration reforms around protecting workers from exploitation and ensuring temporary migrants understand their rights and obligations.
According to Pratt, English language colleges can play precisely that role.
“The English training and practical support provided by ELICOS colleges at the beginning of a working holiday make sure students are far better equipped to understand their rights and obligations as workers,” he said.
In other words, an English college is not simply a place where a backpacker improves their grammar before heading off to pick fruit or pour beers. Many colleges provide well developed training to prepare Working Holiday Makers for Australia’s workplace culture, legal system, and support services.
According to a recent report by English Australia, Working Holiday Maker student numbers are about the same as they were pre-COVID, though this is down 35% from the number 10 years ago. The research also shows that Working Holiday Makers who take English courses tend to be between 18 and 22 years old and study for an average of 8 weeks at the start of their stay in Australia.
That makes the sudden removal of a significant source of ELICOS students even harder to reconcile with the government’s broader policy objectives. By not nuancing the policy changes to ensure a strong ELICOS sector, Australia is losing its capability and capacity to ensure international students, temporary workers, and other migrants get the English language training and support they need to be productive and defend themselves against exploitation.
A pause that doesn’t feel like a pause
The nature of this issue is a window into the broader migration policy mess the government seems to be in. From the perspective of the Working Holiday Makers, the regional employers, and the colleges, this change has been sudden, unannounced, unexplained, and left everyone wondering what happened. For many, the worse part of it is the uncertainty.
Pratt says the experience of schools and agents suggests that subclass 417 processing stopped, or almost stopped, for applications lodged after 3 July. The governments data on the program and reports from agents and providers reveal that prior to July 95% of applicants were granted their visa and they typically received it within 2 weeks of applying.
“This isn’t the ‘slowing’ Burke has acknowledged,” he said. “What we are seeing on the ground looks very much like a full stop.”
A genuine slowing of visa processing is frustrating. A sudden, complete halt is something else entirely.
ELICOS colleges have told the Koala of students whose plans were built around a particular arrival date, with accommodation, work placements, local travel, English courses, RSA courses, insurance all already booked and paid for. When a visa does not arrive, all of this unravels.
Pratt says schools have spent the past week dealing with anxious emails from students and agents, postponing accommodation, changing course start dates and, in some cases, processing cancellations and getting whatever refunds they can.
For the ELICOS industry, which has endured repeated visa-related shocks since the pandemic, the sense of déjà vu is hard to miss.
The collateral damage problem
The issue goes beyond the immediate impact.
Australia’s migration debate increasingly treats temporary visa categories as interchangeable numbers. Reduce one category here, slow another there, prioritise a different group somewhere else, and the overall migration number should eventually come down.
But the people attached to those numbers are not interchangeable, and their impact varies considerably.
A Working Holiday Maker might be a backpacker, but they are also a student, a consumer, a worker, a regional visitor and, hopefully and commonly, a future advocate for Australia.
They may study English in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth or a regional centre, spend money in local businesses, work in hospitality or agriculture, but they return home with a strong connection to Australia.
Wasting people’s time and money and stamping out their dream of adventure in their gap year in Australia risks doing the opposite. Making such sudden changes to visa settings, without warning or even announcement, is seen by many as unfair and unreasonable. Taking money from young people for a service and then suddenly deciding without even telling them that you won’t provide it, appears unethical.
Australia’s reputation takes another hit
International education depends heavily on predictability. Students and agents need to know that if they pay for a course, book accommodation and make travel arrangements, Australia will provide a reasonably stable pathway for them to arrive and study.
That confidence has been battered by repeated changes to student visa settings in recent times.
Pratt argues that Australia risks extending that damage into the Working Holiday market.
“In gushing speeches from the government we are regularly reminded of the ‘soft power’ value of international education for Australia,” he said. “Unfortunately, the opposite is also true.”
The ABC’s reporting reinforces the broader picture: the government is increasingly using visa processing delays as a mechanism for managing migration numbers, with business groups warning that the resulting delays could undermine Australia’s longer-term workforce needs.
The political calculation
There is, of course, a political logic to the move.
The government is under pressure to reduce NOM, which remains substantially higher than it wants. The ABC report states that the number of people in Australia on Working Holiday visas has increased from 146,340 in 2017 to 225,650, while the student visa population has also grown significantly.
Working Holiday Makers are therefore an obvious number to put under the microscope. But rather than take the time to work with the stakeholders and find a sensible, sustainable solution, we seem to have yet another sudden decision made behind closed doors in Canberra, apparently without concern for consequences.
According to Pratt, many Australians may be left wondering why “strawberries are ten dollars a punnet this summer, and the mangoes are rotting on the trees.” Meanwhile, the consequences for ELICOS will undoubtedly be more job losses, campuses closing, and a sector on its knees.
