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The Australian Future Skills List – Where is it?

Guest Blogger: Embrace Australia
So what has happened to the Australian Future Skills List that we were promised back in December? As Australian visa applicants drum their fingers impatiently, waiting for news on the FSL we take a look at what could have gone wrong.

The Critical Skills List (CSL) was introduced back in January 2009 in order to prioritise those applications with occupations that were desperately needed to fill the skills shortages Australia was experiencing at the time.

The CSL was meant to update the rather outdated MODL and closely represent real skill shortages all over Australia. If you had a skill that was in the MODL you still had a strong application, but if your skill was in the CSL it meant that your application would be processed a lot quicker.

The CSL was meant to work in harmony with the Australian states own critical skills list, however some of their skilled occupations in demand are not on the CSL. For instance Western Australia has included Production Manager on their skills in demand list and have even noted: “The shortage appears to be most severe for mining production managers with underground hard rock experience relevant to the Australian mining industry.” Yet the Critical Skills List does not list Production Manager as an occupation in demand.

At the time of the CSL’s introduction however, Senator Chris Evans, the Minister for Australian Immigration and Citizenship, reassured applicants that the CSL does indeed work closely with the state governments: “The Critical Skills List will be reviewed regularly, in consultation with the States and Territories, industry and unions to ensure that it remains valid and current in the changing circumstances.”

Then came September 23rd and new regulations for priority processing which meant that if you had managed to get state-sponsorship but did not have an occupation on the Australian Government’s CSL, your visa application would not receive priority. That means that Western Australia would have to wait for its Production Managers. Rather a monumental mistake by the government surely, since Western Australia is currently going through a mining boom. The wait would not be a short one either as applicants were told by the DIAC that their visa applications might not now be finalised for up to three years.

The Future Skills List is proposed to reflect more accurately the skills that are in severe demand, much as the CSL was meant to do. The government may use it in an attempt to ‘save face’, thereby ensuring that state skills in demand are included on the FSL, or they may not. It’s difficult to tell without more information. However the FSL is intended to replace both the MODL and the CSL, the latter being phased out slowly.

But where, you may ask, is this Future Skills List? The Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) had stated that it expected to announce the FSL back in December. But there was no word from the DIAC about it. Now we are into January and all across the internet, Australian migration forums are all echoing with the same question – where is it?

Susan Wareham McGrath a migration agent and member of the Embrace Australia community has this to say on the subject of the missing FSL: “DIAC originally intended to announce the results of the MODL Review in December 2009 after it had gone to Parliament. It wasn’t able to meet that timeframe and Parliament will next sit between 2 and 11 February. Hopefully, things will progress soon after that, but it depends on the Order of Business during the sitting. If it doesn’t make it during the February sitting, Parliaments next sitting will be 9 – 18 March.”
“Unfortunately, all we can do at this stage is “watch this space” and keep an eye on the daily Order of Business and Hansard between 2 – 11 February.”

So there you go, hopefully all will be revealed this month and speculation about the occupations that will appear on the FSL will be put to rest. No doubt many Category 5 applicants will be hoping that the government have taken notice of the skills shortages in many regional states of Australia and that the FSL accurately reflects these shortages. If not then it’s back to the drawing board for many frustrated Australia visa applicants.

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