THE INDEPENDENT 457
visa Integrity
Review Panel has handed its final
report to the Australian Government,
recommending a number of changes to
remove cumbersome and unnecessary
bureaucracy from Australia’s critical skilled
migration programs.
Earlier in the year, the government
appointed an expert panel to review the
temporary skilled migration program,
specifically to determine the level of
non-compliance by sponsors, evaluate its
regulatory framework and report on the
scope for deregulation.
Australian Chamber of Commerce
and Industry (ACCI) director Jenny
Lambert was one of the review panel
members and notes the panel found
little evidence of ‘rorting’, as claimed
by the former Labor government.
IMPROVEMENTS TO 457
visa scheme pending
“(However), the integrity review was
about more than just compliance – it was
about actually looking and talking about
the objectives of the scheme and ensuring
the scheme was delivering on those
objectives,” she says.
Based on the evidence of more than
190 submissions, the Review Panel made
a number of important recommendations
to allow the scheme to better support the
international skills needs of employers
while also upholding the scheme’s
integrity as being both economically
responsive and socially responsible.
The most significant recommendations for
the resource industry include speeding up
the approval processes for skilled migration
labour agreements for major resource
projects; implementing more realistic
English language testing standards; and
reducing the market salary rate comparisons
from $250,000 to the previously
longstanding $180,000 per annum.
Through its Industry Innovation
and Competitiveness Agenda report,
released in October, the Australian
Government has already outlined its
intentions to implement these three
recommendations, however indications
are that it will not support the Review
Panel’s recommendation to remove
cumbersome labour market testing
(LMT) measures.
This is contrary to the consistent
advocacy of the business community,
particularly after the Review Panel
reinforced the belief that LMT measures
introduced by the former government did
more to appease union demands than
add value to the system.
RP
IN A DECISION
that has restored certainty to the offshore
resource industry, the Federal Court has rejected a union
challenge to a Coalition ministerial determination that exempted
foreign vessels temporarily servicing offshore resource projects
from Australia’s migration zone and labour laws.
The Coalition’s determination effectively unwound the
former Labor government’s attempts to capture all maritime
work in the offshore sector within Australia’s migration zone.
In rejecting the challenge by the Maritime Union of Australia
(MUA) and the Australian Marine Officers Union (AMOU), Justice
Robert Buchanan held the government’s right to effectively
reverse the previous Labor government’s amendments to the
Migration Act
through a ministerial determination.
The judge notes the concept of a migration zone as set
out in the Act was ‘clearly intended to be a starting point,
not a fixed or final one. The amendments are capable of
contraction and of expansion’.
The laws and regulations the MUA and AMOU were
campaigning against have been in place in Australia since
1982 and are consistent with both international maritime law
and resources work around the globe.
AMMA chief executive Steve Knott says the unions’
unsuccessful legal challenge is a significant and welcome
development in a longstanding union campaign to have
all offshore resources activities captured within Australia’s
migration zone and thus within the reach of Australia’s
workplace laws and union membership coverage.
“This campaign is simply the maritime unions’ attempt
to gain control over areas historically outside their legal
reach,” Knott says.
“These small number of international specialist workers
actually help create Australian jobs. They travel globally and are
paid in accordance with national and international laws.”
The Federal Court will hear an MUA appeal in March 2015.
RP
CERTAINTY RESTORED IN
offshore visa challenge
SUMMER 2014-15 RESOURCE
PEOPLE
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MIGRATION
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