Below is a fact sheet on the Ministerial Direction to update the priority processing arrangements for skilled visas.
The new Ministerial Direction simplifies the visa process and will deliver more efficient visa processing for the benefit of skilled applicants and their sponsors across industries, allowing the Department of Home Affairs to process more skilled applications faster and respond quickly to labour market needs.
This change will also help small businesses seeking to recruit overseas workers. It speeds up processing for all occupations and makes the process less complicated.
Prioritising offshore permanent and provisional skilled visa applications will also enable more workers to enter Australia and contribute to the economy and ease labour shortages.
Applications relating to occupations in regional Australia continue to have priority, helping to support agricultural and other regional work force needs.
This direction removes the Priority Migration Skilled Occupation List (PMSOL) implemented in September 2020, which involved time-consuming and complex assessments. These were only necessary while travel restrictions were in place and contributed to the backlog of skilled visa applications.
The PMSOL was also outdated. Recent National Skills Commission labour market analysis has shown that almost a quarter of occupations on the PMSOL are not in national shortage.
The new direction by the Government restores priority for Accredited Sponsors in all sectors who are trusted employers and key businesses that drive economic productivity. Efficient processing of these applications allows the Department to have more capacity to handle other applications as well.