Articles of interest
A new Ministerial Direction for prioritising skilled visa applications came into effect on 28 October 2022: Ministerial Direction No.100. This formalises the Australian Government’s processing priorities for the health and education sectors, and gathers momentum on the Government’s commitment to improve skilled visa processing times and to clear visa backlogs.
Key improvements we have seen has been The Department of Home Affairs finalising over 2,780,000 visas since 1 June 2022. This
includes over 43,000 temporary skilled applications and over 47,000 permanent skilled visa applications, made possible with 260 more staff working on visa processing than there were at the start of May 2022.
Looking to the immediate future, of key interest to Worldly Migration and it’s clients in Ministerial Direction No.100 is the immediate cessation of the Priority Migration Skilled Occupation List (PMSOL), which contained 44 priority occupations. Claimed by the Department of Home Affairs as “outdated” and “no longer reflected the critical workforce shortages”, the cessation of the 44 priority occupations now results in what should be better processing times for everyone, due to the Governments “committed additional funding and staff to reduce processing times”.
Only time will tell on the fruits of the DHA’s efforts, particularly for those clients who were experiencing 4+ months processing times on their ‘priority’ application only to now have priority taken away from them.
Written by Evan Bishop
MARN 1679414
Employer Sponsored Visa Specialist
24th February 2020 – The Fair Work Commission has been busy, more than 100 modern awards changing:
If you employ staff under a modern award, or if you are an employee on a modern award yourself, then it is important to know that as a result of a 4 year review, the Fair Work Commission has begun to roll-out updated awards, the first commencing 4th Feb 2020.
For the 30 modern awards already changed on or just after 4th Feb 2020, if your pay week is from Monday to Sunday, the new awards take effect from Monday 10 February 2020.
Another 70+ awards are soon to be changed, you can view the full list below. This is of most importance for employers, but in my opinion also important for employees to read up on any key changes that may have occurred.
https://www.fairwork.gov.au/awards-and-agreements/awards/changes-to-awards-in-2020
29th October 2019 – 50 years since the first message sent via network (pre-internet), here’s how it went:
I find this sort of stuff fascinating. 50 years ago, via a US Department of Defence network, a programmer attempted to transmit the message ‘login’ from one computer to another 560+ kilometres away. The letters ‘lo’ were received at the other end before the system crashed. Read the full story below:
https://www.freelancer.com/articles/starting-your-business/internet-and-the-future-of-work
17th October 2019 – Push to classify the Gold Coast as regional:
The Gold Coast is seeking to be reclassified as a regional area to benefit from the new visas and incentives to be introduced next month, an incentive which is seeing international students prefer cities such as Adelaide (currently regional), the change aiming to capture the international student market more competitively. SBS reports:
UPDATED 27th October 2019: Although not legislated, Gold Coast (and Perth) are now in consideration to change from metropolitan to regional for migration purposes. It’s a step in the right direction, but I repeat that it is not yet formalised in legislation (which can cause problems later as I wrote about in August).
SBS reports:
12th September 2019 – Immigration Success – Half of top 50 Australian CEO’s were born overseas:
The Apollo Communications Australian Top 50 CEO Report is in (see full report here), and shows that 24 of those top 50 CEO’s were born overseas, showing just how valuable immigration is to Australia. Top countries were UK (9), US (4), and South Africa (3). Read a summary from Yahoo Finance here:
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/immigration-success-top-ceos-born-overseas-211020877.html
19th June 2019 – Accountants with 90 points is less than 20 waiting for 189 Visa invitation:
A Freedom of Information request (FOI) to the Department of Home Affairs by a peer back in late May yielded results that are not surprising as to how tough it is for Accountants to achieve points for the 189 Skilled Independent Visa, yet that numbers tell truth of just how hard it is.
You can see the request here and the results here.
To summarise, Accountant (a pro-rate occupation code, 2211) within a 2 month window had the following submitted waiting for an invitation:
80 Points = 4,222 primary applicants
85 Points = 682 primary applicants
90 Points = 19 primary applicants
95 Points = Less than 5 primary applicants.
As you can see from the results in the link, the submitted EOI’s awaiting invitation for Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers is bleak too.
The silver lining if you are in this situation; at least you know you are not alone!
33% Australia’s average turnover rate – Mental health and burnout an alarming cause of staff retention issues:
Recruitment firm Hays surveyed 1600 professionals and found 40% of Australian’s plan to leave their job within the next 12 months. Research and Advisory firm Gartner can back this up, with their Q1 2019 survey of 1909 Australian professions found that only 30% of respondents had a high intention of staying in their current job. Lack of training/development and challenge along with burnout the major causes. Read more:
https://www.hrmonline.com.au/recruitment/job-seeking-worrying-trends/
20% of all Fair Work Ombudsmen cases in 2017-2018 involved visa holders – the alarming exploitation stat:
SBS World News reports that 20 per cent of all cases dealt with by the Fair Work Ombudsmen between 2017-18 involved workers who were visa holders. The Fair Work Ombudsmen said workers shouldn’t be afraid of losing their visa when seeking assistance. Check it out:
Priority Processing $1000 AUD:
Available for Tourist Visas and Visitor Visas for certain passport holders, the Department will happily look at your application within 2 business days if you splash the cash. A great incentive, and took everyone by suprise when the Immigration Department had their website closed for relaunch over the weekend and then included this service without announcement on Monday 12th Nov. A fantastic option for those willing and able. Check it out: