Hey all, R1 elapids are fairly hard to come by through public sales. A while ago I was lucky enough to score a yellow faced whip through a public sale, however I was fairly sure after purchase it was wild caught and bodged onto the books given it's condition and behaviour. All other public sales of whippies I've seen since then are dubious to say the least.
With that said, there are a number of sexed pairs pairs floating around. I have been told there is someone in Coffs Harbour with some, a breeder in Victoria as well as a contact of mine in SA who has recently acquired a breeding pair that have bred before (I can't provide you with their details as they have asked me to not pass those one. My apologies). With that said in the coming years I think they'll start to become more prevalent due to the rise in popularity around them, the main issue with them is they are finicky to get feeding on rodents (and more finicky to keep feeding on rodents) and take a lot of effort as neonates. A lot of people that have them can't justify breeding them due to the effort, which I have been told is time consuming.
Another species that are more common in ways are De Vis Banded snakes, I've seen a few of them floating around (never kept them personally) and I've been told they are a good first R1 elapid by a few people. I also know people have marshies, but I've never seen a public sale for them.
As I understand it, you don't actually need to keep R1 or R2 elapids to move onto R3. If your application meets the criteria and you have good references you should be fine. It's also advisable to do a recognised venomous snake course as that looks really good on your application (I've done John Mostyn's one and would recommend it personally).
As for the license changes, the last application put forward (I've seen) had all elapids on license not on an exempt list. However there was some feedback from people that disapproved of the idea that you can keep a whipsnake on the same class of license as Hoplo, so I think that may come into review.
Hope that helps!