Canavan staggeringly wrong on working holidaymakers

Nationals’ Leader Matt Canavan’s recent statements about working holidaymakers are so staggeringly wrong that they could even make Donald Trump blush.

At a press conference on 13 August, Canavan said:

“...we will not be changing, will not be seeking changes to working holiday visa makers because that's not the reason why we've had the surge in migration. We've had those circumstances in place for a long time and what we'll be focusing on is those programs that have blown out under this government and caused us to have unbelievable level of migration that we've never seen before.”

Two problems with that statement:

Working holidaymakers have been a major driver of the net migration boom in recent years behind students.
Much of that was driven by changes to the program made by the Coalition Government.

Not only are working holidaymakers a substantial portion of net migration, but their contribution has steadily grown since COVID. In 2024-25, working holidaymakers represented 17.5% of net migration, up from 13.4% in 2021-22.

The Coalition Government made many changes that drove up the contribution of working holidaymakers to net migration, including:

Changing the terms of the working holidaymaker agreement with the UK to provide for an automatic three-year working holidaymaker visa and increasing the minimum age from 30 to 35. Working holidaymakers from the UK have subsequently boomed.
Introducing the option for a third working holidaymaker visa for people who work for 88 days in regional Australia. The Labor Government has inexplicably retained that.
Enabling working holidaymakers and others to apply for a special COVID visa with no requirements other than some sort of vague job offer. That has now been abolished, but its flow-on effects are still in the visa system.
A 30% increase in the caps for working holidaymaker agreements where caps apply. That has now been removed by the Labor Government.
In early 2022, introducing fee-free working holidaymaker visas. That no longer exists.
Prior to COVID, agreements were introduced with a range of new countries that did not become fully operational until after the pandemic.

The effect of these on the stock of working holidaymakers in Australia has been enormous (see Chart 1).

That stock of working holidaymakers is flowing through to other visas including skilled temporary entry, partners as well as skilled permanent visas, particularly in regional Australia.

Senator Pauline Hanson has also said she will not be cutting working holidaymaker visas. She says she will also not cut the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (P.A.L.M.) visa, which has a multitude of problems related to exploitation and abuse, most recently highlighted by a NSW Parliamentary Report on modern slavery.

But why would Hanson and Canavan, both of whom want to massively cut net migration to Australia, want to retain visas that primarily affect regional Australia? After all, their electoral base is in regional Australia where there is much greater anti-immigration sentiment. Could it be that employers and farmers in regional Australia who rely on these visas have got into their ears?

If Canavan and Hanson want to make massive cuts to net migration but will be quarantining these visas because they benefit regional employers, they have made their task enormously more difficult.

Dr Abul Rizvi is an Independent Australia columnist and former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul or Bluesky @abulrizvi.bsky.social.