Australia and New Zealand both rewrote large parts of their work and study visa systems between 2024 and 2026, and the headline changes are easy to miss because most kept their old subclass numbers. We re-verified the full inbound program set for both countries on 2026-06-21 against the official portals — immi.homeaffairs.gov.au and immigration.govt.nz — covering visitor, student, skilled, regional, partner, working-holiday and post-study routes. Four changes matter most if you are planning a move.
Australia: the TSS visa is gone — meet the Skills in Demand 482
On 7 December 2024 the Skills in Demand (SID) visa replaced the Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) visa under the same subclass 482. The new Core Skills stream is the mainstream employer-sponsored route.
- Granted for up to 4 years, multiple entry, and renewable an unlimited number of times.
- Requires a nominated occupation on the Core Skills Occupation List (CSOL), the market salary rate, and at least one year of relevant work experience.
- After a 2-year hold it opens a permanent-residence pathway via the Employer Nomination Scheme (subclass 186, Temporary Residence Transition).
The verified 4-year validity and the full refusal-reason list are on the Australia Skills in Demand (482) page.
Australia: the Temporary Graduate 485, restructured
The post-study Temporary Graduate visa (subclass 485) was restructured: its Post-Higher Education Work stream now grants 2 years for a bachelor or masters-by-coursework degree, up to 3 years for a masters-by-research or doctoral degree, and up to 5 years for Hong Kong and British National (Overseas) passport holders.
- You must hold an eligible recent qualification from a CRICOS-registered institution and apply within the time limit after completing your course.
- The stay depends on your qualification level — we store a representative 2 years and note the longer research/doctoral and HK/BNO periods.
- A separate Genuine Student test now governs the upstream Student visa (subclass 500).
See the Australia Temporary Graduate (485) page for the verified stay and refusal reasons. The Student visa (500) page carries the up-to-5-year course-length stay and the 2025-26 financial-capacity benchmark of AUD 29,710.
New Zealand: Essential Skills is closed — use the AEWV
New Zealand closed its Essential Skills Work Visa to new applicants on 4 July 2022 and replaced it (and five other work categories) with the Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV). The biggest practical difference: the employer must be accredited by Immigration New Zealand before they can hire you.
- The AEWV allows a total stay of up to 5 years for most jobs (3 years for ANZSCO skill level 4 or 5 roles), then a 12-month stand-down.
- It requires an accredited employer, a job check meeting the median-wage rules, and a genuine, sustainable role.
- Our legacy Essential Skills page now states the closure and points to the AEWV.
The current route is the New Zealand AEWV page, with the verified 5-year maximum and refusal reasons.
And the routes travellers search most
We also re-verified the high-traffic short stays: Australia’s Working Holiday (417) and New Zealand’s Working Holiday visa (12 months each, longer for some countries), the Australian ETA (601) (up to 3 months per visit over a 12-month validity), the Visitor visa (600) (3, 6 or 12 months) and New Zealand’s Visitor visa (up to 9 months in an 18-month period). The skilled and regional permanent pathways — Skilled Nominated (190) and Skilled Work Regional (491) — and the onshore Partner visa (820/801) were corrected too.
How we keep this honest
This post accompanies a data correction. Every Australian and New Zealand program on our site had been showing a 90-day maximum stay — a machine default carried over from short-stay visas — for what are in fact multi-year work, study, regional, partner and permanent-residence routes (and a 12-month working-holiday and ETA). We corrected each to its verified validity, set the entry and extension flags, recorded the source and date, and added the refusal reasons, on 2026-06-21, as part of a fresh verification of Australia’s and New Zealand’s inbound visa programs against official portals. Our full method is in the Editorial & Data Standards.