On 4 July 2024, the Senate referred the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Sponsorship and Nomination Processes) Bill 2024 (the Bill that will introduce the changes proposed by the Migration Strategy) to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for an inquiry and their recommendation.

After consideration of the proposed amendments and submissions from industry and other stakeholders including unions, professional associations and representative bodies, the Committee has recommended that the Senate pass the Bill.

Quick recap of proposed key changes
The government are proposing to:

• establish the Skills in Demand Visa to replace the Temporary Skills Shortage (TSS)(482) visa with 3 streams and legislate income thresholds for the Skills in Demand visa to be indexed annually as below

 

Stream	Description	Salary (to be indexed annually)
Specialist Skills Pathway	For highly skilled migrants who bring significant economic benefits to Australia, such as meeting labour needs that exist at an individual firm level and assist companies in acquiring specialist knowledge, niche technologies or research expertise unavailable in Australia	$135,000
Core Skills	Temporary skilled workers in occupations identified by the Government as being in national shortage on a Consolidated Skills Occupation List (CSOL); OR Where Australia has committed to providing access to the Australian labour market in relation to that occupation through international trade agreements	$73,150 – $135,000
Essential Skills	Intended to be defined by occupation and pay Will be sector-specific, capped, embedded with stronger regulation and minimum standards and subject to further advice from Jobs and Skills Australia	Below $73,150 or as specified by the Minister of Immigration in writing

 

• increase validity period of Labour Market Testing (LMT) from 4 months to 6 months. Unfortunately it does not look like the LMT requirements will be abolished

 

• change the amount of time that a sponsor is required to provide information about any Australian workers that they retrenched or made redundant from occupations nominated will also increase to 6 months (currently this is 4 months)

 

• establish a public register of approved sponsors

More detail on the changes can be found here.

Submissions made to the Government
Most of the submissions considered by the Committee were broadly supportive of the changes. However a majority of submissions reported challenges during the visa sponsorship and nomination process, including:

• long processing times;
• complex paperwork and requirements; and
• high Government costs.

Many also called for the abolishment of LMT as it causes unnecessary delays in recruitment in genuine areas of a skills shortage that have already been identified and is an inefficient tool to test if a sponsor is genuinely testing the market.

Of note is the Department’s feedback to criticism of the annual income indexation. This will be contained in legislation rather than a legislative instrument which allows for migrants and their employers to be made aware of annual wage increases several months before it comes into force. They will be made public in February of each year (when the figures are published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics), more than three months before the increase occurs on 1 July each year. This provides advance notice for employers to consider their options for employees.

We will provide more updates as more information on the strategy is released by government but to date, we do not have any indication of when this will happen.

If you have any other questions, please contact your Ajuria advisor.

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