Coming to Australia for a short time. What each visa allows, and the conditions attached to it that decide what you can do once you are here.
General information about how these visas are written, not advice about your situation. Short-stay visas look simple and the conditions attached to them are where people come unstuck, so the detail below is about the conditions as much as the criteria.
If you are already in Australia and your visa is close to expiring, the options narrow quickly. Get advice early. No Worries Migration is an Australian migration practice, not a law firm, and nothing on this website is legal advice.
Tourism, visiting family or friends, or permitted business-visitor activities. Streams include Tourist, Sponsored Family and Business Visitor. Medical treatment is a separate visa, the subclass 602.
Read moreSubclass 651For eVisitor eligible passports, granted offshore. Multiple entries over 12 months, three months on each.
Read moreSubclass 400Highly specialised, non-ongoing work, or Australia's Interest. Tied to the employer the visa was granted for.
Read moreSubclass 408A list of specified activities, from invited events to workplace justice claims, each with its own requirements.
Read moreThe eVisitor is limited to holders of an eVisitor eligible passport, and it can only be granted while you are outside Australia. The subclass 600 is open more widely. It is not a single-purpose visa: the stream depends on the reason for travel and the applicant’s circumstances, and the common streams are Tourist, Sponsored Family and Business Visitor. Someone travelling primarily for medical treatment should instead consider the separate Medical Treatment visa (subclass 602), subject to its own requirements.
An eVisitor lets you travel to Australia as many times as you like in the 12 months after grant, and stay three months on each entry. A subclass 600 is granted for the period the Minister specifies.
cl 651.211, 651.411, 651.511
No. Condition 8101 prohibits work and it is mandatory on the Tourist and Sponsored Family streams.
An eVisitor is slightly different. Condition 8115 lets you work only where it amounts to a business visitor activity, which is a defined term covering things like negotiations and conferences. It is not permission to take a job.
There is one narrow exception on the visitor visa. Where you are in financial hardship because your circumstances changed after you arrived, you cannot leave for reasons beyond your control, and you have compelling personal reasons to work, the Regulations allow the visa to be granted without condition 8101.
cl 600.611(3)–(4), 651.611 · conditions 8101, 8115
Up to three months. Condition 8201 caps study or training at that, and it is imposed on visitor and eVisitor visas.
If you hold a student visa, or have held one since you last entered, a visitor visa cannot be granted for the purpose of starting, continuing or finishing a registered course you are enrolled in.
condition 8201; cl 600.222
Not indefinitely. A visitor visa cannot be granted if the grant would let you stay in Australia for more than 12 consecutive months on a combination of visitor visas, Working Holiday or Work and Holiday visas and bridging visas, unless exceptional circumstances exist.
Two conditions also bear on this. Condition 8531 requires you to leave by the end of the period the visa allows, and condition 8558 caps you at 12 months in any 18.
cl 600.215; conditions 8531, 8558
Applying onshore is much harder in that position. Without a substantive visa you have to satisfy Schedule 3 criteria 3001, 3003, 3004 and 3005, and the visitor clause does not carry the compelling-reasons waiver that the partner visa clause has.
Time matters more than anything else here. Get advice the same week.
cl 600.223(2)
Short, highly specialised, non-ongoing work. Two clauses carry the weight: the work must be highly specialised, and your engagement in it must not be ongoing.
You also have to show a need for you to be in Australia to do it, and that your attributes or employment background fit the work.
There is a second stream. Where there are compelling circumstances affecting Australia's interests that require your entry and stay, and the work relates directly to those circumstances, the Australia's Interest stream applies instead.
cl 400.211, 400.221, 400.222, 400.241
Six months after first entry is the ceiling, not an entitlement. The clause grants the period the Minister specifies, up to that maximum, so a longer request has to be justified by the work.
You have six months from grant to travel, and the visa is single entry unless the Minister says otherwise.
cl 400.511
Only the work the visa was granted for. Condition 8107 is mandatory: you must not stop working for that employer, work in a position inconsistent with the one the visa was granted for, or work for anyone else.
Condition 8303 is also imposed, and condition 8503 may be. If 8503 is on your visa, you cannot apply for another substantive visa onshore.
cl 400.611; conditions 8107, 8303, 8503
No. The Highly Specialised Work stream excludes performing as an entertainer under a contract or for non-profit purposes, supporting entertainers, and taking part in film, television, radio, theatre, concert or recording work meant to be shown or performed in Australia.
Entertainment work is the subclass 408 instead.
cl 400.223
A list of specified activities rather than a single purpose. You have to fall within one of the clauses in the alternative criteria, and each has its own requirements about who invites, sponsors or supports you.
Invited participation in an event is one of them, and it is limited to a stay of three months or less. Australian Government endorsed events is another.
cl 408.22, 408.221, 408.229
It depends which clause you come in under. Three months if you stated on the form that your stay would be three months or less. Four years for workplace justice or an Australian Government endorsed event. Two years for anyone else.
cl 408.511
There is a workplace justice clause in the 408, and a visa granted on that basis can run for up to four years.
It exists so that someone pursuing a workplace exploitation claim is not forced to leave before the claim is dealt with. Whether it fits your situation depends on the stage your claim has reached and what evidence supports it, so this is one to get advice on rather than lodge blind.
cl 408.228A, 408.511
Adequate health insurance for your stay, adequate means to support yourself, and that you do not already hold a permanent visa or a temporary visa the Minister has specified. Our resources page links to overseas health cover providers.
You also must not have engaged in payment-for-visas conduct in the previous three years, and your activities must not have adverse consequences for the employment or training of Australians.
cl 408.211, 408.212, 408.214, 408.215, 408.218
Condition 8503 means that once you have entered Australia you are not entitled to be granted another substantive visa while you remain here. It does not stop you leaving and applying from outside Australia. What it stops is changing to another visa without leaving.
A protection visa is carved out of the condition itself, so an onshore protection application is not barred by 8503 and needs no waiver. The other no-further-application conditions carry their own carve-outs and they are not the same: 8534 also excepts a subclass 485 and a subclass 590, and 8535 excepts a student visa granted on the basis of Commonwealth or foreign government support.
Schedule 8, conditions 8503, 8534, 8535
Yes, and there is more than one route. Which one is open to you changes the answer completely.
The general route is the hardship test. Since the visa was granted, compelling and compassionate circumstances must have developed over which you had no control and which resulted in a major change to your circumstances. If a waiver has been refused before, the new circumstances have to be substantially different from those already considered, and the request has to be in writing. That is a narrow test.
The skilled route is separate, and it is not a hardship test at all. The Regulations provide a further circumstance in which condition 8503 may be waived: that the holder has a genuine intention to apply for a General Skilled Migration visa, or a subclass 186, 187, 188, 191, 482 or 494. General Skilled Migration is a defined term and takes in the subclass 189, 190, 491 and 485, among others. That provision requires no compelling or compassionate circumstances, and unlike the general route it carries no requirement that the holder ask in writing.
Condition 8534 has its own version of the skilled route, with one extra requirement: the holder must have completed the course the visa was granted for. There is a further route again for a person who holds, or has ever held, a safe haven enterprise visa and meets the prescribed requirements.
Migration Act 1958 s.41(2)(a), s.41(2A) · reg 1.03, reg 2.05(4), reg 2.05(4AA), reg 2.05(4AB), reg 2.05(5A)
No. Where condition 8503 has been waived under that provision, an application for a substantive visa is valid only if it is for a General Skilled Migration visa, or a subclass 186, 187, 188, 191, 482 or 494. It is the same list.
So the waiver does not unlock the onshore system generally. A partner visa is not on that list, and a person who had 8503 waived on this route cannot validly lodge one. Condition 8534 works the same way after a waiver on its own equivalent route.
Conditions 8535 and 8540 have no skilled route at all. For those the general compelling-and-compassionate test is the only way.
Migration Act 1958 s.46 · reg 2.07AG
It matters later. Two of these visas are decided partly on whether you complied substantially with the conditions on your last visa, so a breach follows you into the next application even if nothing happened at the time.
A breach also exposes the visa to cancellation. There is more on that in our cancellation guide.
cl 600.211(a), 400.213(a), 408.213(a)
Often not. Visitor refusals are the area where review rights most often do not exist, so read the decision letter before assuming there is one. Whether a refusal is reviewable turns on where you were when you applied and, for some offshore refusals, on whether you were sponsored by someone with standing to seek review.
The letter will tell you. If it says there is a review right, the time limit is set by law, counted in days, and generally cannot be extended.
From 2 October 2026 a student visa holder applying for a further student visa must generally apply from outside Australia, family members can be included only in limited cases, and seventeen visas now stop a student visa application being made in Australia.
From 5 October 2026, VET providers and education agents can no longer recruit or enrol new international students into the Graduate Diploma of Management (Learning), after the Assistant Minister for International Education used the new course cancellation powers for the first time.
Four instruments commenced on 28 September 2026: the eVisitor application form and manner, the Approved Destination Status travel agent list, the countries used for health referrals, and the ESOS agencies for ELICOS and Foundation Programs.
Send us your visa grant notice and notify us what has changed since the visa was granted.
These terms come up in more than one section, so they are collected here. Everything else is explained where it appears. Each one names the provision it comes from.
Read from the Federal Register of Legislation on 22 August 2026, from the Migration Regulations 1994 compilation then in force. The Schedule 8 conditions are quoted from Schedule 8 itself. Each answer ends with the provision it comes from, and the documents are linked here.
Two things on this page are set by Ministerial instrument: which passports are eVisitor eligible, and which activities the subclass 408 covers. For both, the list that applies is the one in the instrument in force at the time.
Based on content from the Federal Register of Legislation at 22 August 2026. For the latest information on Australian Government legislation please go to https://www.legislation.gov.au. Federal Register material is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Also cited on this page:
Still general information. Reading the provision is not the same as knowing which version applied to your application, how the Department and the Tribunal have interpreted it, or what it means for your circumstances. That is what advice is for.
