Nothing announced on 17 September 2026 has started. No law has changed, no regulation has been made, and no start date was given for any measure. An application submitted today is assessed under the rules that already exist.
Second and third year Working Holiday visas would move to a ballot. 45,000 second-year places, against about 57,000 people who qualified last year. 5,000 third-year places, against about 31,000 in that group.
The regional work requirement stays, and it comes first. 88 days of specified work to enter the second-year ballot, six months for the third-year ballot. Doing the work would qualify you for the draw, not for the visa.
The government has committed to stabilising Working Holiday processing times at three months. No start date came with it, and nothing has changed for an application already submitted and waiting.
A no further stay condition would go on all visitor visas, and the announced purpose is to make visitor visas easier to get. All visitor visas means the subclass 600, the free 651 eVisitor and the 601 Electronic Travel Authority. The condition stops the holder applying for most other visas from inside Australia. With that route closed, a partner waiting on a spouse visa would be able to visit Australia regularly.
Students and graduates would no longer be able to bring family members. This reaches the 485 Temporary Graduate visa as well as the 500 Student visa. The Pacific, ASEAN countries and certain courses, PhDs among them, were named as exceptions. Anyone already in Australia with family attached keeps that as it is.
Course changes: one of three routes closes. Moving up to a higher qualification stays open. Moving sideways, or down to a cheaper provider, is what ends.
The points test is being redone, with housing trades set to score the same as a university qualification.
Priority processing widens to nine named sectors. Healthcare, construction, education, law enforcement, defence, resources, agriculture, aquaculture and fishing, across permanent and temporary visas.
Net overseas migration was 292,000 in figures released that morning, 47% below the post-Covid peak of 2023. The budget forecasts are 245,000 for this financial year and 225,000 in 2027/28.
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We prepare your application, check it for errors, and submit it for you.Australia announced a package of migration changes on 17 September 2026, set out the same day in a media release from the Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke. For most people reading this, the consequential item is a ballot for second and third year Working Holiday visas: 45,000 second-year places and 5,000 third-year places, where last year about 57,000 people qualified for a second year and about 31,000 were in the third-year group.
Not all of it is a tightening, and we are not going to pretend otherwise for a tidier story. Two measures are meant to make things easier: faster Working Holiday processing, and a visitor visa change designed so that a partner waiting on a spouse visa can actually get a visitor visa. Both sit alongside real restrictions, and neither has a start date, so nothing has sped up yet.
Nothing announced on 17 September 2026 is law. There is no regulation, no legislative instrument, and no published start date for any of the measures below. If you are applying for an Australian visa this week, the rules that apply to you are the rules that applied last week.
Has anything changed for an application submitted today?
No. Every measure in the package is a statement of intent, not a rule in force.
A migration change becomes real when it is written into law: an amendment to the Migration Act 1958, or a registered legislative instrument such as a change to the Migration Regulations 1994. Each carries its own date from which it applies. None of these measures has reached that point.
Which of those two routes a measure takes decides how much notice you get. Visa criteria sit in the Migration Regulations, where a change is law from the day it is registered and no vote in Parliament is needed. Two of the measures Burke wanted need legislation instead, meaning a vote in both houses, which is why they were not announced. The regulation route is the faster one, and it gives less notice.
The detail that decides whether a change reaches you personally sits in the instrument, not in the announcement. Who is exempt, what counts as an existing application, what happens to someone part-way through something: none of that is written yet. Read an announcement for direction, not for dates.
Are second and third year Working Holiday visas going to a ballot?
That is what was announced. Second and third year Working Holiday visas would be allocated by ballot, with 45,000 places for second-year visas and 5,000 places for third-year visas. Last year about 57,000 people qualified for a second year and about 31,000 were in the third-year group. No start date was given.
The stated reason is control and certainty over the numbers, and the government has said not everybody who qualifies will get through. The third year is where the gap is widest, from about 31,000 people to 5,000 places.
This touches both Working Holiday subclasses, the 417 and the 462. It is separate from the existing ballot that already gates first Work and Holiday visas for a few countries, which our 462 ballot guide covers.
We are not going to put a number on anyone's chances. How the draw would run, how often, and who would sit in each pool were not announced. What is clear is that two numbers went from uncapped to capped.
The 88 days still comes first
The regional work requirement was not touched. Under what was announced you would still need 88 days of specified work to enter the second-year ballot, and six months for the third-year ballot. Finishing the work would qualify you for the draw, not for the visa.
That ordering is the practical heart of this for anyone part-way through their days. The records that prove your days matter exactly as much as they did yesterday. Where the work has to happen has not changed either. Our eligible postcodes guide covers the geography, and the Working Holiday guide covers what counts as specified work.
Tern Tip
Keep your payslips, employer reference letters, and matching bank records for every day of specified work, and keep them as you go rather than reconstructing them later. That was the right habit under the current rules, and nothing here makes it less so. Documentation you cannot produce is documentation you do not have.
Would a Working Holiday visa be processed faster?
The government has committed to stabilising Working Holiday processing at three months, with no start date attached.
Take that at exactly its face value. It is a government undertaking to stabilise a queue, not a Tern estimate and not a promise that your own application will be decided inside three months. Nothing has changed for an application already submitted and waiting.
It is aimed at a queue that has been slow. Working Holiday decisions have moved more slowly since July 2026, and the processing times Home Affairs publishes have not matched what applicants are actually seeing. The room to fix that is meant to come from the ballot: capping the second and third year gives the government certainty over the numbers, and that certainty is what would let it process Working Holiday applications at normal speed again.
If you are waiting on a Working Holiday visa, your application is being processed the same way it was last week. Nothing you do will move that queue. What you can control is that nothing on your side adds to the wait. Keep your contact details current in the government portal (ImmiAccount), and answer anything the Department asks for on the day it arrives. Our processing times guide covers what the published figures do and do not tell you about your own case.
What was announced for UK passport holders
UK applications would keep being processed at the slower pace of recent months. Whether a ballot would reach UK citizens at all was left unanswered.
UK passport holders sit apart here because of the regional work requirement. Nearly every Working Holiday applicant has to do it to earn a second or third year: 88 days of specified work for a second, six months for a third. UK citizens do not, because the free trade agreement gives them a second and a third year without any regional work. About 17,000 UK backpackers were in Australia when that agreement was signed. The previous peak was around 35,000. The figure now is just under 80,000.
That exemption is also why the ballot question is open. Qualifying for the ballot was described as completing the regional work, and the UK has no regional work requirement. Nobody has said whether or how a ballot would apply to UK citizens. If you hold a UK passport, treat your position on the ballot as unknown until the instrument is published, including the version of it that sounds better for you.
What was announced about no further stay on visitor visas?
All visitor visas would carry a no further stay condition. That condition stops the holder being granted another visa while they are in Australia. The announced purpose of adding it is to make visitor visas easier to get, which is close to the opposite of how the measure first reads.
Burke described a double standard. A couple who apply from outside Australia wait years on a partner application. A partner who comes on a visitor visa and applies from inside Australia gets a bridging visa and stays while that application is decided. Because that route exists, case officers could not be satisfied that a visitor with an Australian partner would actually leave. Whether you will leave is the test a visitor visa turns on. So genuine visitors were being refused: people who wanted to attend a wedding, be at a family milestone, or see an aged relative before they died.
Removing the automatic switch to a bridging visa is what is meant to fix that. If a visitor visa cannot be used to stay on, the reason for refusing it falls away, and the visa can be granted. The partner case was made explicitly: a partner waiting on a spouse visa would be able to visit Australia regularly.
Two limits were stated:
It does not apply to protection applications. Other onshore applications, meaning applications made from inside Australia, are what it reaches.
It has no effect on anyone already in Australia. It governs the issuing of future visas.
The cost is real and worth naming. A visitor visa carrying a no further stay condition cannot be used to apply for the onshore partner visa (subclass 820). That is condition 8503, and it is not new; it already closes that route today. What would change is how often it applies. Anyone whose plan was to visit and then apply from inside Australia would instead be applying from outside Australia, on the 309 partner visa or the 300 prospective marriage visa. Our guide to bringing an overseas partner on a tourist visa works through that trade-off as the rules stand today, and our bridging visa guide explains what the bridging visa actually does.
Which visitor visas does it cover? All of them. That is worth spelling out, because a visitor visa in Australia is at least three different things. The subclass 600 Visitor visa is the one people apply and pay for. The subclass 651 eVisitor is what most European passport holders travel on, including UK citizens, and it is free. The subclass 601 Electronic Travel Authority covers US, Japanese and Canadian passport holders, among others. Those last two are the visas most people actually arrive on, and all three are in scope.
One narrower question is still open. Nothing has been said about whether the condition would be attached to every grant automatically or applied case by case inside those subclasses, and no start date was given. That level of detail sits in the instrument, and the instrument has not been made.
If you hold a visitor visa today, your own grant notice is the document that decides your position. Our visitor visa extensions guide explains how to check for the condition and the narrow grounds on which it can be waived.
Can students and graduates still bring their partner and children?
Today, yes. What was announced is that they would not be able to. Family members would no longer be allowed to be attached to international student or graduate visa applications. That puts the 485 Temporary Graduate visa inside this measure alongside the 500 Student visa.
Two parts of it matter more than the headline.
People already in Australia were addressed directly. Anyone already here with family members attached keeps that arrangement until they leave or become entitled to a permanent visa. Burke was explicit that no families would be broken up inside Australia.
The exceptions are broader than the first reports suggested. Burke named the Pacific, ASEAN countries, which include Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia, and certain courses, giving PhDs as the example. The restriction is written for "most student visas", not all of them. No list of qualifying courses was published, no mechanism was described, and no start date was given.
Two related things were addressed but not changed. Student planning levels, the numbers that shape how many student visas are granted, stay as they are. And refusal rates have risen for applicants from some countries because of closer checking of whether an applicant can genuinely afford the course. Burke said that has been misreported as a measure to bring net overseas migration down, and that it is not one.
If you are on a 500 or a 485 and your partner or children are already included, nothing about your situation has changed. If you were planning to add someone later, that is the plan this measure would reach. Watch for the instrument rather than the headlines.
Is student visa hopping being banned?
Three different things get called visa hopping, and only one of them is closing.
Extension. A 12-month extension where a student got sick or their provider collapsed: unchanged.
Transfer. Moving to the same institution or the same level of study, using credits already earned: still allowed, and it would be tested for legitimacy.
Progression. Upward only. Bachelor degree to masters is fine. Moving sideways, or down to a cheaper provider, is what ends.
The reasoning given was aimed at repeat switching between providers as a way of extending a stay rather than studying.
What nobody has yet is the detail that decides individual cases: how the qualification scale would be defined, which qualifications sit at which level, how a same-level transfer would be tested for legitimacy, and what happens to a course change already underway. None of it is in force. If you are weighing a course change, you are assessed under today's rules.
What was announced for skilled visas and the points test?
The points test for the permanent skilled program is being rebuilt, worked up with Treasury. The specific change named: the new test would be able to lift particular skills so they score as a higher qualification, and on implementation housing trades would score the same as a university qualification.
That is a genuine shift in who the points test rewards. If you work in a housing trade, this is the measure in the package most likely to matter to you, and it is also the one carrying the least detail. There is no published points table, no list of which trades count as housing trades, and no start date.
Is priority processing changing?
Yes, as announced. Ministerial Direction 119 is being updated, and nine priority sectors were named: healthcare, construction, education, law enforcement, defence, resources, agriculture, aquaculture and fishing, across both permanent and temporary visas. A Ministerial Direction is a written instruction from the Minister that tells case officers what order to decide applications in.
That list was introduced with the word "including", so the updated direction may reach further than these nine sectors. Nine is what has been named so far.
This points in the opposite direction to the slower processing of recent months. If you work in one of those sectors, it is the measure most likely to touch a real timeline. We are not going to attach a number of weeks or months to it. Priority processing changes the order of a queue rather than its length, and the updated direction is not published.
What else was announced: overstayers, migration agents and character rules
Three more measures were announced. None of them changes a visa criterion, and none has a start date.
For people found in Australia without a valid visa, the announcement is a return to the practice Australia used before 2015: detention, and an expectation that they arrange their own departure. The resourcing was named as 100 extra compliance officers and 250 extra detention beds. Burke stressed that this is not a United States style operation and goes no further than what Australia did before 2015. The number of people in Australia without a valid visa has been reported as 77,000.
For registered migration agents, the code of conduct would be changed so that an agent who "knowingly" supports visa applications without merit can be sanctioned and deregistered. The qualifier matters. This is aimed at agents who know an application has no merit, not at agents whose applications happen to be refused. The example given was protection claims.
Ministerial Direction 110 is also being updated. This is the direction that governs character decisions and visa cancellations, and the update is described as being "to combat hate and criminal behaviour": better protection for children who are victims of crime, better protection for victims of domestic and family violence, and what it calls modern Australia's commitment to stamping out hatred. No draft wording was published, so what it changes in practice is not yet clear.
What do the migration numbers actually say?
Net overseas migration was 292,000 in figures released on the morning of the announcement. That is 47 per cent below the post-Covid peak of 2023, against budget forecasts of 245,000 for this financial year and 225,000 in 2027/28. That second figure is a financial year, ending in June 2028, not a calendar year. Burke said the number is tracking slightly below the 245,000 forecast.
Net overseas migration counts everyone who arrives minus everyone who leaves, across temporary and permanent visas together, so it is a different measure from the permanent migration program. Our 2026-27 Budget explainer covers what the number counts and how it is built.
Burke also made a point about the framing. Net overseas migration used to be a budget forecast and is now treated as a target, which he called a very different way of looking at it. He maintained that parts of the number sit outside government control, citing Australian citizens coming home and the relative strength of the economy.
Read the target as direction. The measures underneath it are where any effect on an individual application would come from, and those still have to be written into law.
What was not announced
Burke marked the edge of the package himself. Two measures he wanted were left out because they need legislation:
Measures against protection claims he described as disingenuous. He said that part of the story could not be completed on the day.
An expression of interest system for arrivals, which he called the most effective lever available on who comes to Australia. Nothing was said about how one would work or when it might be put to Parliament.
He also said the reforms are not as comprehensive as he would like them to be. That is his assessment, not ours.
Partner visa policy itself was not changed. The answer given on partner visa waiting times was the visitor visa measure: partners waiting on a spouse visa being able to visit. No change to the partner visa program, its criteria or its processing was announced.
No start date was given for anything. Not the Working Holiday ballot, not the three-month processing commitment, not the visitor visa condition, not the family members measure, not the course progression rule, not the points test, not the updated directions, not the compliance measures. Any date you see attached to these measures today is somebody's estimate.
Do the 17 September 2026 announcements affect a visa application submitted today?
Will I need to enter a ballot for a second year Working Holiday visa?
Do I still need 88 days of regional work under the announced ballot?
How many second and third year Working Holiday places would there be?
I am waiting on my Working Holiday visa. Will it be decided faster now?
Are UK passport holders affected by the Working Holiday changes?
Would a no further stay condition make visitor visas harder or easier to get?
Does the visitor visa no further stay change affect a visa I already hold?
Can my partner visit Australia while we wait on a partner visa?
Can my partner still come with me on a student or 485 graduate visa?
Is student visa hopping being banned?
Are student visa planning levels changing?
What is changing in the skilled migration points test?
Which visas would get priority processing?
Was anything announced about partner visas on 17 September 2026?
What did the government say it could not announce yet?
Working Holiday, visitor, student, 485, skilled: whichever of these you hold, the honest summary is the same. The direction changed on 17 September, and the rules did not. Your 88 days still count the way they counted yesterday. The conditions on your visa are the ones printed on your grant notice. The measure that would affect you does not exist in law yet, and when it does, the instrument will be where the real detail is.
The most useful thing to do with an announcement is keep your own file in order. That means records of specified work, a clear read of your own visa conditions, and a plan built on the rules that exist. Our Working Holiday visa guide and visitor visa guide describe the rules as they stand today, and we update them when the law moves rather than when a speech does.
When you are ready to apply under the rules that actually apply to you, we prepare and submit the application, and we tell you when a situation is complex enough to need a lawyer. Start from our Working Holiday visa page or the visa selector.
Sources: the Minister's media release of 17 September 2026, "Migration reform to end rorts and bring in the skills Australia needs for a strong economy", and the National Press Club address of the same day. The figure of 77,000 people in Australia without a valid visa comes from the ABC's coverage rather than from the Minister.
