Visa condition 8547 limits 417 and 462 holders to six calendar months with the same employer. It is measured in calendar time, not hours worked.
What exactly does the rule restrict?
Six calendar months with one employer, counted from your start date regardless of hours worked. Two days a week for six months uses the same allowance as full time.
- Measured in calendar months, not days or hours worked
- Applies per employer, not to your total time in Australia
- Breach can lead to visa cancellation
- The clock resets only when a new working holiday visa is granted
The condition exists to keep the visa about travel rather than employment, which is why the exemptions are drawn around industries with genuine seasonal labour shortages.
Who counts as the same employer?
The legal entity behind the ABN, not the building you work in.
- The same company across different branches is generally the same employer
- Related businesses trading under different ABNs are different employers
- Franchises under different owners are different employers
- In labour hire, the host business where you actually work is treated as the employer
- For contractors, each end client is a separate employer
Check the ABN on your payslip to know which entity employs you. Two venues with the same name and different ABNs are two employers.
Which work is exempt?
The Department of Home Affairs exempts a long list of sectors covering the substantial majority of working holiday employment. On this list you can stay with the same employer beyond six months without asking anyone.
- Plant and animal cultivation, including agriculture and horticulture
- Fishing and pearling
- Tree farming and felling
- Mining
- Construction
- Tourism and hospitality, anywhere in Australia
- Health, aged care and disability care
- Childcare
- Food processing
- Natural disaster recovery
- Different locations of the same employer, where no single location exceeds six months
Tourism and hospitality being exempt nationwide removes the concern entirely for the largest single group of working holiday workers.
What if your work is not exempt?
Permission has to be requested in writing from the Department of Home Affairs before the six months ends, not after. You can keep working while the request is being decided, and you must stop if it is refused.
Approval is discretionary, and the grounds that succeed are practical: a new visa application already lodged that would allow full time work, a priority sector with employer support, or a genuine operational reason. Leaving the request until week 25 is the most common reason it does not go smoothly.
How does this interact with the 88 days?
They are separate rules that happen to overlap. The 88 days of specified work for a second year visa is an immigration requirement about the type and location of work. Condition 8547 is a limit on time with one employer.
Most specified work industries are also exempt from the six month rule, so completing all 88 days with a single farm is usually fine. For a third visa the requirement rises to six months of specified work during the second visa year, which is why the exemptions matter more at that stage.
What does a breach actually cost?
More later than immediately. The immediate risk is visa cancellation, real but not the usual outcome. The durable cost is the record: a breach sits against you when any future Australian visa is assessed, including a second working holiday visa or a skilled visa years later.
There is a separate exposure on the employer's side, which explains why some refuse to keep you past six months even where an exemption applies. They are managing their own compliance.
What decides whether this is an issue for you?
Three facts, all settleable this afternoon. Which industry the work is in, since the exemptions are broad. Which legal entity employs you, which is on the payslip as an ABN. And when you actually started, because the clock is calendar based and people misremember by weeks.
Where no exemption applies, changing employers is usually simpler than seeking permission, and the tax and super consequences are minor. The same 15% rate applies throughout, superannuation continues to accrue at 12%, and all the wages combine into one tax return at the end of the year. The one thing worth managing is the super: each new employer means a new nomination, and giving every one of them the same fund details is what stops a year producing four accounts and four claims.