A week on since Malcolm Turnbull’s 457 visa announcement and already we’re starting to hear of fall-out.
As The Land said last week, it might be a great catch-cry to be putting Australians first, but these changes don’t seem to be doing that.
Regional businesses have already been caught on the hop and are now wondering how much the changes are going to cost them.
The Finley dairy The Land spoke to this week is worried the cost to bring in just one worker could double to $20,000. With the volatility of dairy prices this is the last thing a dairy farmer needs, and likewise for any farm business. Deer, goat and turf farming, meanwhile, is looking like being turfed from the list which can apply. The skills in some of these industries aren’t exactly common.
The halving of the visa periods from four to two years also disadvantages businesses where efficiencies would have come from the skills that those workers would have developed across the longer visa window. A shorter visa period will mean quicker turnover and another $20,000 comes around sooner for the next application.
The government seems hell bent on milking dollars from visa holders or the businesses which use them. Perhaps instead of hitting the labour market harder, the government should tax imported goods that compete directly with Australian produce harder to help make Australian-grown produce more competitive.
While visa programs are a stop gap measure to help regional businesses where governments have failed in delivering on other programs, structures and planning to keep Australians in rural areas, right now, the Turnbull government also needs to make sure it doesn’t undermine that interim measure.
Regional communities rely on those businesses and if they suffer because the transition with the 457 visa is too sudden, or inadequate, then country towns will suffer.
As for the increased English requirements, this is a short term working visa we’re talking about, not a citizenship test. If government is worried about people using correct English, why doesn’t it take a closer look at some parts of Sydney or Melbourne? Talk about bureaucracy gone mad. That’s without even looking at many of our school graduates who can’t even use grammar and punctuation, let alone spell.
