An outcry across North Queensland at working holiday-maker visa cutbacks – whilst education ‘visa shopfronts’ remain a key backdoor to foreign students for bogus bridging and protection visa pathways onto permanent residency and citizenship – is being echoed nation-wide as a clarion call to the Prime Minister “to not throw out the backpackers with the bathwater, when pulling the plug on the rising tide of migration”, warns Federal Kennedy MP, Bob Katter.
“Overwhelmingly, the pathway to permanent migration is through the student visa scheme – not backpackers – but if we’d stopped the universities from being visa shops 25 years ago, then we’d already have shut half of them down,” said Mr Katter of regulatory interventions announced by the Immigration Minister without consulting regional communities that are reliant on a steady stream of backpackers who work outside big cities to extend their once-in-a-lifetime adventure Down Under.
“But instead of closing down the foreign student factories, the Government quietly turned off the tap of processing working holiday visas – a labour lifeline for our regional tourism hospitality and agricultural industries – and have now announced they want to choke the pipeline by capping visas in a lucky draw for backpackers who have already committed to regional and rural work to stay another year…? It’s illogical, at best, or even worse, downright stupidity.”
Mr Katter said North Queensland’s backpacker-reliant businesses were already feeling the fallout from the Immigration Minister’s announcement to withdraw the welcome mat for the world’s youth backpacker market, as ongoing staff cancel confirmed contracts and abandon plans to stay a third and final year given the stiff competition for just 5000 places, down 80 per cent on existing levels.
“In the meantime, we’ve shot up to 80,000 UK working holiday-makers – or about one-third of the total – who the previous LNP government gave a free pass from regional work requirements, and putting even more pressure on inadequate infrastructure in the major capitals housing the majority of Australia’s three million temporary residents, including more than one million foreign nationals on student, graduate and bridging visa-holders.”
Mr Katter was further alarmed by a trend identified in temporary-to-protection “visa-hopping” for full government benefits and family reunion entitlements under international refugee conventions – with 37,500 active onshore protection appeals in the Administrative Review Tribunal by mid-2026 not counting the unknown backlog of onshore refugee bids yet to be decided by Government.
Nor was the ART’s onshore protection (subclass 866) visa review backlog dominated by refugee-source nations common to Australia’s humanitarian program – with more than half those appeals (about 20,000) from South/East Asian student-source countries such as China, India and Pakistan.
And despite the Department of Home Affairs detecting patterns of students ‘subsequently making protection applications’ in publicly available data – leading to website warnings that “85 per cent are refused” after “changes to stop misuse” by visa-hoppers “who just want to stay longer to work” – the ART has reported an annual 25 per cent increase in grants of onshore protection visas that deliver instant permanent residency entitlements for access to full citizenship within a few years.
“But what the public statistics do not reveal is how many of these ‘refugees’ previously held student or other bridging visas,” added Mr Katter in reference to Senate Estimates evidence of sharp rises in student and onshore protection visas as major drivers of a the ART’s rapidly growing workload.
“The backpackers who are here for a good time – not a long time – quite simply should never have even been considered as part of the backdoor migration cohort.
“Very few stay and those who do integrate into our towns – unlike the city-bound visa-hopping students and other so-called ‘temporary’ residents crammed largely into already overcrowded capital city enclaves.
“Whereas in our regions, backpackers pick our fruit, pour our beers, clean our hotel rooms, make our coffees… then spend their earnings exploring our wonderful country.
“And I thank them for coming here, doing the work, spending their money, and sharing their adventures with the world.”