13/10/2026
**Regional Australia needs visitors and workers. These visa changes risk costing us both.**
Please watch this from Hospitality NT. The concern stretches well beyond the Territory, into Far North Queensland and regional communities across Australia.
At MOM Darwin, working holiday makers stay with us, work in local businesses, book tours and spend money throughout the community. We also employ five international students who are valued members of our team.
These people help keep regional Australia running.
Getting here already takes commitment: visa costs, international flights, onward travel, accommodation and finding work. The proposed working holiday ballot would add another uncertainty—complete the required regional work and still potentially miss out on another year.
Why make that commitment if you cannot confidently plan what comes next?
Student visa changes, limits on student commencements and existing work-hour restrictions add to the wider picture. They affect different people in different ways, but their combined impact on regional communities needs to be understood.
For hospitality and tourism, fewer visitors means less income. Fewer available workers can mean reduced services and shorter opening hours. Together, they put businesses, local suppliers and Australian jobs under pressure.
**You cannot promote regional tourism while making it harder for the people who sustain it to come and stay.**
We’re asking the Government to listen before pushing ahead: protect people already completing regional work, publish the regional impact assessment and sit down with the businesses and workers affected.
Hospitality NT is raising an issue that deserves national attention.
Please share this video. If you’re a regional business, worker, student or traveller, tell us what these changes would mean for you.
