Working holiday visas are still being processed but are being handled "more slowly than they were previously," Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told reporters on Aug. 16, giving no further explanation for the slowdown, Australian Associated Press reported.

Burke defended the delay to the government's wider migration package, saying the policy was still being worked through and had to go through a full cabinet process.

Asked what fewer backpackers would mean for agriculture, Burke pointed to the Pacific labor mobility scheme as the primary source of temporary farm staff.

When the government improved worker protections on the Pacific program, he said, some of the worst operators responded that they would simply switch to backpackers instead, but that was not how the system was meant to work, SBS News reported.

Applications from 24 countries subject to annual caps were listed as paused on the Department of Home Affairs website as of Aug. 7, leaving only San Marino and Turkey open.

China, India and Vietnam are handled through a separate ballot rather than a standard cap, according to the department, with Vietnam allocated 1,500 places a year and China 5,000.

The pauses apply only to the capped Work and Holiday stream. Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore are suspended, alongside Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay.

The uncapped Working Holiday stream remains open, and the U.K., France, Ireland, Italy and South Korea accounted for 71.9% of its grants in the six months to June 30, 2025, according to a Home Affairs program report.

Processing times for applicants from those countries have lengthened since July, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Home Affairs describes pausing as a routine tool for spreading applications across a program year, and says paused countries can reopen before the year ends.

The department's published guidance now adds that lodgements may also be paused to support the government's migration settings and keep the program sustainable.

Burke was due to unveil a broader overhaul at the National Press Club on Aug. 6 but withdrew on Aug. 4, a day after the plan went to cabinet and the Expenditure Review Committee, which identified unresolved questions, ABC News reported.

The package had gone to cabinet several times without agreement on a backpacker visa crackdown, tighter family reunion rules, and limits on the work and appeal rights of asylum seekers whose initial claims have been rejected, according to ABC News.

Temporary migrants would lose work rights once a protection claim is refused under the plan, the broadcaster reported.

About 1,580 onshore protection claims are lodged each month and roughly 90% are rejected, ABC News reported, citing Home Affairs figures. Nearly 37,000 rejected claims were before the Administrative Review Tribunal as of June, in a process that can run for years while applicants stay and work on bridging visas.

Net overseas migration fell to 306,000 in 2024-25 from 429,000 a year earlier, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported, down from a post-pandemic peak of 556,000 in the year to September 2023.

The May 13 federal budget revised forecasts up by 55,000 across two financial years, ABC News reported, putting expected net migration near 990,000 over the four years to 2028-29 against Labor's target of 225,000 a year by 2028.

Backpacker numbers have roughly doubled since 2017, from 146,340 to 225,650 this year, according to Home Affairs data reported by ABC News. Student visas rose from 383,910 to 528,000 over the same period, and bridging visas more than tripled to 413,000.

Nationals leader Matt Canavan said the working holiday system had worked for a long time and that backpackers were not taking housing in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane, SBS News reported, pointing to student visas instead. His party voted at its Aug. 15 national conference to cap international students at 25% of the current intake.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, who wants net migration cut to 130,000 a year, also said the reduction should come from students and warned that farmers would fail without backpackers.

Coalition frontbencher Andrew Bragg has floated a target of 180,000 a year, though the Coalition has not adopted an annual figure.