Are we targeting the people regional Australia needs most?
Are we reducing the very cohort who have the most incentive to spend, work and travel in Australia?
Australia’s Working Holiday Maker (WHM) program has always been about much more than filling jobs.
For more than 50 years, it has brought young international visitors to Australia who travel widely, spend in our communities and, importantly for accommodation and tourism businesses, provide a flexible workforce in destinations where finding staff can be extremely difficult.
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That contribution is particularly important in regional Australia.
Yet the latest changes to the WHM program raise a fundamental question: are we reducing the very cohort of Working Holiday Makers who have the strongest incentive to travel, work and spend in our regions?
Under the Government’s announced changes, second-year WHM places will be limited to 45,000, compared with around 57,000 last year, while third-year places will fall much more sharply, from around 31,000 to just 5,000. Applicants will still need to complete the required regional work before entering the ballot.
At the same time, the fastest-growing segment in the program comes from the United Kingdom. Changes introduced through the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement mean UK passport holders can access three separate Working Holiday visas without completing the specified work normally required to qualify for a second or third year. The age limit for UK applicants has also increased to 35.
The UK is already our largest source of subclass 417 Working Holiday Makers. In 2024-25, more than 42,000 first-year visas were granted to UK citizens, accounting for almost 27 per cent of all first-year 417 grants. Home Affairs has specifically identified the removal of the UK specified-work requirement as contributing to increased WHM applications and approvals.
Related AccomNews story: Targetting Working Holiday Makers makes no sense
More young British travellers choosing Australia is unquestionably valuable for our visitor economy. But unlike WHMs from most other 417 countries, they no longer have the same visa incentive to leave Sydney, Melbourne or other major centres to undertake the regional work that has traditionally supported dispersal.
That matters.
Working Holiday Makers are unusual because they are both visitors and workers. Tourism Research Australia data puts their 2024 expenditure at $2.5 billion with other estimates as high as $4.6 billion, with almost a quarter of that expenditure occurring in regional communities.
For accommodation operators, the benefit is two-sided. WHMs are customers staying in hostels, hotels, holiday parks and other accommodation as they travel Australia. They are also an important source of seasonal labour across accommodation, hospitality and tourism.
This is happening while Australia’s broader international tourism recovery remains unfinished. July international holiday arrivals were still around 10 percent below 2019 levels, and recovery remains particularly uneven across regional Australia.
Government has a legitimate objective in managing net overseas migration. But WHMs should not be treated simply as another migration number without understanding the economic consequences.
If policy changes remove tens of thousands of second- and third-year WHMs who have undertaken regional work, while the UK cohort continues to grow without the same incentive to disperse, we need to understand what that means for regional tourism businesses.
Before these changes are fully implemented, Australia needs proper economic impact modelling, including identifying the effect on regional visitation, visitor expenditure and workforce availability.
The question isn’t simply how many Working Holiday Makers Australia should have. It is whether the program is structured to deliver the greatest possible value to the communities and businesses that need them most.
