Under the changes, dairy cattle farmers are included on the short-term skilled occupation list and only able to apply for a 2-year visa.
By John McQueen, Interim ADF Chief Executive Officer
Dairy is a highly dynamic industry offering lots of opportunities for career growth and development. However, it is no secret that we have domestic labour shortages in regional and rural areas.
Our preference is always to hire Australian workers, but there are not always enough experienced farmhands to meet the demand of our industry. This is despite more than a decade of offering training courses and pathway programs for Australian workers to enter the dairy industry.
ADF has continued to lobby the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP)for regulation amendments to visas allowing overseas workers to fill vital on-farm and off-farm roles.
This week, the Government announced that the 457 Temporary Work visa will be abolished and replaced with the completely new Temporary Skill Shortage visa by March 2018. ADF is concerned with the changes and is seeking clarification on many aspects from the DIPB.
We have now been advised that the current visa changes will have no impact on the Dairy Industry Labour Agreement, which allows dairy farmers to recruit senior farm hands. We have been assured that:
- our existing labour agreements remaining in effect;
- our existing visa holders not impacted unless they apply for another visa impacted by the changes outside of the labour agreement programme; or
- new nominations that we intend to lodge/related visa applications are not impacted – including applications for occupations which have been ‘removed’ from the standard programme or are now subject to a caveat in the standard programme but remain specified in our agreement.
We also understand that under these changes, which come into effect immediately:
- dairy cattle farmers are included on the short-term skilled occupation list and only able to apply for a 2-year visa;
- 2-year visas can only be renewed once, which will lead to an increase in administrative burden and red tape on farmers looking to access these new visas;
- dairy, like other agricultural commodities is not included on the medium to long term strategic skilled occupation list to access 4-year visas; and
- changes have been made to the Employer Nomination Scheme (subclass 186) visa and to the Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme (subclass 187) visa.
We are still in the process of gaining clarification on what will happen to current visa applicants who are waiting on approvals and the additional occupations available to support regional employers.
ADF supports the employment of overseas workers to fill vital on-farm roles. We will continue to liaise with government to ensure dairy farmers that need to employ overseas staff can do so.