Supporting Strong and Sustainable Regions
Review of Regional Migration Settings
The Law Council of Australia provided a submission to Department of Home Affairs (Department) to comment on the June 2024 Discussion Paper Supporting strong and sustainable regions.
The Law Council agrees with the proposition in the Discussion Paper that:
Australia’s regions are a crucial part of Australia’s economy and our unique national identity. The regions have been shaped and invigorated by the profound history of our First Nations peoples and the millions of migrants that have called regional Australia home.1
Legal practitioners have observed that processes for applying for many of the regional migration options provided by the Department, including Designated Area Migration Agreements (DAMAs), the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) Scheme and the Working Holiday Maker (WHM) program, are overly complex. Simplifying them would go a long way to facilitating regional migration.
The Law Council’s key points regarding regional migration settings and the Discussion Paper are:
- The revision of occupation lists for the regions is not supported – we recommend that such lists be abandoned altogether.
- The definition of ‘regional’ for the purposes of the Migration Regulations 1994 (Cth) could be greatly simplified by adopting a model that lists excluded, rather than included, postcodes.
- The WHM program does need to be reformed to prevent abuse, but care should be taken to make adjustments that do not make it so onerous as to become unworkable for employers.
- There is a lack of clarity on the operation and future of the PALM scheme.
- State and Territory authorities should be more involved in the planning processes for these visa schemes (with some caveats as set out in the submission).
The Law Council encourages the Government to be bolder in its regional migration reform. The current system is overly complex and does not deliver the desired outcomes for regional employers,2 so adding further complexity (for example by adopting regional occupation lists) is not desirable.
We acknowledge that most migrants wish to work in cities, and that concessions or other incentives are often necessary to encourage them to work in regional areas. We hope our answers to the Discussion Paper questions set out in the submission below assist the Government in providing such incentives.
Read the full submission below.
1 Discussion Paper, 1.
2 See e.g. Discussion Paper, 3 and 6.
Last Updated on 21/08/2024