AHA Voice: Common sense on visa processing

Common sense on visa processing

It will come as no surprise to anyone even remotely involved in the accommodation and tourism sectors that our major issue right now is the chronic staff shortage facing our sector, from the Pacifi c to the Indian Ocean hotels are crying out for more staff .

The fi gures are stark • 16,400 unresolved applications, with processing timelines blowing out to more than 19 months for half of all potential migrants seeking to come to Australia.

• 16,467 applications were on hand for the key 887 skilled regional visa stream in March this year, including 300 applications which had been with offi cials for more than a year. • The median short-term temporary skilled visa currently takes 83 days to fi nalise, up from 53 days in March. • One-quarter of applications are taking at least one year to process, while the slowest 10 percent of temporary skilled visas are taking 15 months to process. In a recent survey by the Australian Hotels Association 73 percent of respondents (almost three in four) are suff ering fi nancially because of the skills shortage. Over the Christmas and New Year period alone 100,000 positions were vacant nation-wide.

Six months later venues are still forced to close on certain days and reduce hours to give hard-working staff a break. Hotel rooms are capped. Staff are exhausted. Customers are fed-up. At the time of writing there are 8000 cook positions alone advertised on Seek (it won’t come as a shock to you there simply are not enough Australians available to fi ll these positions) and there won’t be for some time.

We were suff ering pre-COVID to train and retain staff . Now we are struggling to bring skilled workers back to our shores, which, coupled with the on-going lack of backpackers and “Working Holiday Makers” is creating a hospitality employment crisis. The AHA and our sister organisation, Tourism Accommodation Australia, has managed to score some wins on this front in an extremely diffi cult environment.

In the dying days of the Morrison Government, myself with AHA NSW CEO John Whelan and TAA CEO Michael Johnson nutt ed out a new fi ve-year labour agreement for the hotel and accommodation sectors.

While it isn’t a perfect solution by any means, it is a step forward and gives skilled workers in key occupations like cooks and chefs, a pathway to permanent residency which they didn’t have before. It puts us on a level playing fi eld for the fi rst time with countries like Canada and New Zealand, which are competing with us to att ract skilled workers. and restaurant manager, hotel or motel manager, hotel service manager, accommodation, and hospitality manager, cook, chef and pastry cook. To put it simply, it follows years of hard work and will make Australian hotels like yours much more att ractive in gaining and retaining staff . And I should add, membership of the AHA, TAA or the Accommodation Association is given favourable weighting by the Department of Home Aff airs. But, while this helps, AHA and TAA have also hit the ground running with the new Albanese Government, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the new Prime Minister and his team on their election and look forward to working closely with them over the next three years. We have already raised the important issue of visa processing times with ministers in the new government. I will have more to say on that at a later stage once they have had time to get their feet under their desks.

The visa processing system has been dire for some time especially in the 482 and 489 categories, with wait times of up to 10 months for needed workers such as chefs! Another problem which has been inherited by the new government. The situation is obviously critical and more needs to be done urgently on this front, especially if the tourism and accommodation sectors are expected to help lift the economy back to pre-pandemic levels by providing world class service to domestic tourists (and the growing number of international tourists).

Of course, we all want to employ Australian workers fi rst, but it’s glaringly obvious there is no local pool of workers ready and able to fi ll these tens of thousands of positions. There hasn’t been for some time.

I would like to thank the Federal Government ($10M) and Victorian Government ($5.6M) for their commitment to off er hospitality workers training and skills. These programs will be delivered by the Accommodation Association, and it is a huge credit to them that governments are recognising their eff orts and capabilities in training our workers of the future.

AHA and TAA (and the soon to be merged Accommodation Australia) will be pressing hard for accelerated visa processing times in coming months. It is the swift est way to improve the chronic skills shortage crippling our sector. It’s the common-sense solution.

Rest assured we will be doing all we can on this front, working constructively with a new government (and all sides of politics) to provide practical solutions.

Stephen Ferguson

CEO, Australian Hotels Association

Over the Christmas and New Year period alone 100,000 positions were vacant nation-wide