Australia too - however, to get a renewal all you need is an online connection and a credit card, the renewal (at least for me!) goes through automatically. (Notwithstanding that Australia just increased the PR-renewal cost from ~400-500 to ~1400-1500 AUD)

Based on my understanding of Australian PR, what you are renewing is not your visa but the travel facility.

For non-PR, I don't think Australia distinguishes visa and status like US (i.e. you can't have valid status while your visa expired)

Is it? If I understand it correctly, in Japan, if you have a valid residence card, you can use that to enter the country. That is not true for the US (if you consider I-94 the US equivalent of residence card)

Yeah, my bad. After re-reading your original comment I think I was responding to the part that explains 'visa sticker grants entry, residence status is separate', but I have somehow missed the tail of 'you cannot enter w/o the sticker'. In Japan, the former is exactly the same shape but the latter is not. If you have a long-term residence status (and carry the card) you can enter the country on it alone.

There are some technicalities -- your passport has to carry the re-entry permit, but it's affixed to everyone who requests it at the port of exit, granted it's up to 1 yr.