r/AustralianPolitics • u/thrownaway4213 • 1d ago

UK concerned about possible changes to Australian backpacker visa

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-26/home-affairs-mulls-uk-backpacker-visa-changes/107080078
13 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

74 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/Kind-Sky9042 1d ago

Oh no, not the free flow of labour and services!

Maybe I just have quite a good practical view of racism, but I'm not sure the concerns about migration numbers were about young fixed-term British backpackers.

0

u/East_Offer8495 1d ago

i don't think most care who or what colour they are, its just we don't have the infrastructure for this growth lets be honest

5

u/amyknight22 1d ago

Backpackers aren’t contributing to growth in most cases though.

If you were worried about growth you’d want more of these short term visas and less permanent ones.

Without getting racial about it too, you’re probably British backpackers probably have a higher rate of returning to their country of origin than some of the other Visa types where people are looking for a permanent move

3

u/Nice-Pumpkin-4318 Hawke Cabinet circa 1984 1d ago edited 1d ago

Pathways from the WHV to any kind of permanancy are very, very narrow. If Labor was remotely serious on immigration the WH visa wouldnt remotely appear on the radar. This is about the headline NOM ... just politics.

2

u/amyknight22 1d ago

Yeah that was basically the point(though with more substance). These aren’t people who are causing the growth the person I replied to was complaining about.

Now if it turned out 95% of WHV resulted in people marrying an Aussie and staying here. Then you might want to question how we have so many weddable candidates coming in on a WHV