Editor's Blog

Labor senator Kim Carr told The Australian yesterday that he intends to proceed today with a disallowance motion of the Migration Amendment (Offshore Resources Activity) Regulation of 2015 which, if successful, could prevent the employment of highly skilled 457 or 400 visa workers on offshore oil and gas rigs.

The Labor plan if approved, could shut down critical parts of the sector, cost hundreds of millions of dollars and inflict substantial “reputational damage” on the country, notes the report.

Hundreds of foreign workers employed in Australia’s $200 billion offshore oil and gas sector would lose their work rights under Senator Carr’s plan which so far has provided no alternative to as to how these specialised skills will be replaced.

Some $100 million dollars has been committed by the Federal Government to tackle domestic violence. Support groups now say some of this money should be paid to migrant women, escaping domestic violence.

Following a report by the the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence that recommended that women escaping violent relationships be entitled to crisis payments regardless of their visa status, a coalition of 135 groups have written an open letter to the Prime Minister urging him to make funds available to migrant women on temporary visas and fleeing domestic violence.

"Safety from domestic violence is a fundamental human right and must not be subject to a person's visa status," Mr Joe Caputo of the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia recently told SBS, "So we feel that by these women being left behind, they are often forced to go back to violent domestic relationships or an abusive partner because they haven't got access to services."

Three of Australia’s big four’ banks have tightened their mortgage rules, and have ceased lending money to offshore customers who are not citizens or permanent residents of Australia.

The changes come on the back of rising concerns that fraud and money laundering are increasing among foreign buyers in the Australian property market, according an ABC report.

A raft of new rules were introduced last year, including visa checks, heavy fines, and forced sales to deter illegal foreign investment in the Australian housing market. Xu Jiayin, one of China’s richest men, was ordered to sell his $39 million Point Piper mansion within 90 days because it was purchased without approval of the Foreign Investment Review Board. The Treasury announced that several properties were being investigated for potential non-compliance with FIRB rules.

A recent report from The Australia Institute showed that two in three new jobs in Queensland would come in the healthcare, professional and technical services, education and training, accommodation and food services and construction areas from now and probably well into the next 2 decades.

This is great news for the second-largest and third-most-populous state in Australia as job growth in these areas are outstripping job losses in the mining industry, notes the report.

In January, the Queensland Resources Council noted that the mining industry had cut over 20,000 jobs over two years. This is more than a quarter of the mining workforce.  Fortunately, over the same period total employment in Queensland increased by 72,000 due to strong employment growth in other industries, particularly services.

On the eve of ANZAC Day, the peak tourism bodies of Australia and New Zealand launched a lobby urging the migration ministers on either size of the Tasman to develop a single tourist visa for travel to the two countries.

The move comes after a New Zealand government study found that 43 per cent of the 7578 single trans-Tasman visas granted during the Cricket World Cup last year were to Chinese nationals, although China did not have a team in competition.

The tourism chiefs of both countries say that granting entry to both Australia and New Zealand, could encourage more travellers to make long-haul flights to the region. Now, citizens from the two nations have reciprocal work and travel rights, but international tourists need to obtain separate visas for each country.