Australian Immigration Daily News

An email has been sent by DIBP's 457 policy section to Stakeholders re 457 training benchmarks:

Dear Stakeholder,

In response to recent allegations of misuse of funds contributed for the purpose of meeting the subclass 457 training benchmark requirements, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection is conducting an audit of known training funds.

I am writing to advise you of a change to the policy guidance relating to industry training funds as specified in the training benchmarks in the subclass 457 programme and to seek your co-operation in completing the attached survey and returning it to this email address by 20 March 2015.

As you would be aware, training benchmark A requires recent expenditure, by the sponsoring business, to the equivalent of at least 2% of the payroll of the business, in payments allocated to an industry training fund that operates in the same industry as the business.

Industry training funds are statutory authorities responsible for providing funding for training of eligible workers in certain industries.

If there is no statutory industry training fund operating in the same sector as the applicant for approval, for the purposes of meeting training benchmark A, the department will accept evidence of contributions made to:

• a recognised industry body who provide training opportunities or
• a recognised scholarship fund operated by an Australian university or TAFE college.

As a result of integrity concerns about training benchmark A contributions not being spent on training, departmental policy has been updated to specify that no percentage of a contribution made to either a recognised industry body or a scholarship fund operated by a university or TAFE college, for the purposes of satisfying training benchmark A, may be allocated to a commission.  457 sponsorship applications which do not meet the training benchmark requirements will be refused.

An excerpt from PAM3: Sponsorship applicable to Division 3A of Part 2 of the Act – Sponsorship detailing the current policy guidance relating to these two points is attached.

I also take this opportunity to advise you that the recent independent review into the integrity of the 457 programme recommended that the current training benchmarks be replaced by an annual training contribution model with funds managed by the Department of Industry.  

A formal government response to all 22 of the recommendations made by the integrity review is expected to be announced shortly and implementation will begin immediately following this announcement.  The report can be accessed on the department’s website at: http://www.immi.gov.au/pub-res/Pages/reviews-and-inquiries/skilled-visa-programme.aspx.

As noted above, we would appreciate your response to the attached survey by 20 March.  Completed surveys should be sent to this email address.

Kind regards,

Tammy.

457 & Sponsor Monitoring Policy Section
Department of Immigration and Border Protection