The 88 Days: Specified Work for a Second or Third Year

Specified work — almost always called "the 88 days" — is what qualifies you for a second Working Holiday visa. A third year needs six months of it.

It is also where most Irish applicants run into trouble, and almost never because they did not do the work. They did the work, and then could not prove it, or discovered the postcode or industry did not qualify.

This guide covers what actually counts and how to document it as you go.

First: do you even need to do it?

Since 1 July 2024, UK passport holders are exempt from specified work entirely for both second and third Working Holiday visas. The Department's guidance is explicit that this applies even to people who originally entered Australia on a different eligible passport, including an Irish one.

So if you hold both an Irish and a British passport, you can apply for your next visa using the UK passport and skip the requirement completely.

This is far more common among Irish applicants than people expect. If you were born in Northern Ireland, or have a parent born in Britain, you may be entitled to a UK passport. Establishing that before you commit three to six months to regional work is worth an afternoon of your time.

If you hold only an Irish passport, the exemption does not apply. A lot of the discussion online about "the 88 days being scrapped" is about UK citizens, and Irish travellers reading it as applying to them is an expensive misunderstanding.

What counts as specified work

Both the industry and the location have to qualify. Getting one right and the other wrong means the days do not count.

Eligible industries for the subclass 417:

• Plant and animal cultivation — the broad category most farm and harvest work sits in
• Fishing and pearling
• Tree farming and felling
• Mining
• Construction
• Tourism and hospitality, but only in northern Australia and in remote and very remote areas
• Certain declared disaster recovery work

The Department has also been applying flexibility so that work supporting the ongoing operations of a specified industry in an eligible postcode may be accepted — packing shed and processing roles, for example, rather than only work in the field. Do not rely on that without checking, as it is discretionary rather than a rule.

Locations: check the postcode, not the vibe

Eligible areas are set by legislative instrument and updated from time to time. The broad shape of it:

Tourism and hospitality is narrower again: northern Australia plus remote and very remote areas only.

The practical rule is to check the actual postcode of the workplace against the current official list before you accept a job, not the town's reputation as a farming area. Plenty of agricultural work happens in postcodes that do not qualify, particularly around the fringes of the big cities.

Evidence: start on day one

Assume you will have to prove every day. The Department can contact employers directly to verify what you have claimed, and reconstructing six-month-old records from a farm you left months ago is close to impossible.

From your first shift, keep:

• Payslips for every pay period
• Bank statements showing the wages actually arriving in your account
• Your employer's ABN and business details
• Written references confirming your dates, location and duties
• A running log of dates worked, with the workplace address and postcode

The bank statements matter more than people realise. Payslips alone can be questioned; payslips matched against deposits are hard to argue with.

Keep it all in one place in cloud storage rather than on a phone that can be lost, stolen or dropped in a river somewhere in Queensland.

The arrangements to walk away from

Some of this industry takes advantage of people who need days signed off. Treat these as reasons to leave:

• Cash with no payslips. You cannot prove it, and you have no recourse on pay either.
• Unpaid "trial" periods. Not legal, and does not count.
• Work for accommodation. Does not count, and hostels that require it in exchange for signing your days are a known problem.
• An employer offering to sign for days you did not work. This is visa fraud. A false claim can get your application refused and lead to a re-entry ban, which is a catastrophic outcome next to doing the work properly.
• Refusing to give their ABN. No legitimate employer has a reason to withhold it.

You have the same workplace rights as any Australian worker regardless of your visa, including minimum award rates. Needing your days signed off does not change that.

Two conditions that interact with this

Condition 8547 limits you to six months with any one employer. That is exactly enough to cover a third-year requirement with a single employer, and more than enough for a second, but you cannot go beyond it without permission.

Condition 8548 limits study to four months per visa. Relevant if you are thinking of combining a course with your regional work.

Our 417 page covers the visa conditions in full.

Planning it properly

A few things that make the difference:

• Go early. Leaving your days until the last few months of the visa removes your margin if a job falls through, the season ends or the weather turns.
• Follow the harvest calendar. Different regions peak at different times, and arriving out of season means competing for scarce work.
• Line up the next job before finishing the current one. Gaps are what turn three months of work into five months on the road.
• Confirm the postcode in writing before you travel to a job, ideally in the same message where you confirm pay.

Where this leads

Once your days are documented, the application itself is comparatively simple. See the second year visa page for how to lodge, or the third year page if you are going for the full three years.

If the regional work does not appeal, or you are past the age limit, employer sponsorship on a Skills in Demand visa is the other way to extend time in Australia — with no regional work requirement and a route towards permanent residency.

How we can help

We review specified work evidence against the requirement before you lodge, and we will tell you plainly if we think it falls short rather than after a refusal. We also check whether a second passport removes the requirement for you altogether.

Get in touch if you want your days checked before you apply.