Today the Department of Home Affairs releasedthe 2022-23 financial yearup to theend of June usage figures for the Subclass 190 and Subclass 491 state-nomination quotas — in other words, the 2022-23 state-nomination report card is in！
See the data comparison below
An HD report card
2022-23 was the year states received their largest state-nomination quotas on record, and with the sudden revival of Subclass 189, even NSW and Victoria felt a strong sense of urgency，while other states slashed their requirements to attract applicants. They spared no effort in issuing invitations and processing applications.
After a financial year of all-out effort, the report card for the vast majority of states can fairly be called an HD.Overall Subclass 190 usage reached 99.27%Subclass 491 usage reached 98.53%
Queensland: the one blemish
The only reason it didn’t hit 100% was Queensland holding things back (so NSW left 2 Subclass 190 places for…?).Its final Subclass 190 usage was 90.83%, and Subclass 491 was 82.1%.Queensland did try opening a priority-processing channel during the financial year and pushed hard in June to catch up, but without strongly favourable policy support behind it, it was the weakest performer in the state-by-state comparison. What’s past is past — here’s to this financial year.
Even into June, many state-nomination programmes were still hard at work
In previous years the state-nomination programmes were close to wrapping up by the final month of the financial year, but last financial year June was the month the states raced to catch up. Canberra issued 324 Subclass 190 and 277 Subclass 491 formal nominations NSW Subclass 491 also issued 314 places Western Australia, previously criticised for processing too slowly, processed and issued 645 Subclass 190 state-nomination places in the final month, along with 488 Subclass 491Programmes such as the Tasmanian Subclass 190 and 491, and the Northern Territory Subclass 491 all issued a great deal in June alone.
From last Friday, 7 July, visa processing for the new financial year’s Subclass 190 and 491 also began, and a good number of applications lodged between September 2022 and March 2023 have already been granted, meaning some of those invited under the above state-nomination programmes have already completed this PR / near-PR journey. For more grant details, see: The new financial year’s first round: Subclass 491 unleashes a storm of grants — accounting / marketing / translating! Subclass 189/190/143 are here too! Subclass 600 is easier to obtain, and 408 is still available! Besides thanking yourself for your own efforts, this year perhaps we can also credit the state and federal governments for their efficiency and goodwill For the current 2023-24 financial year, every state except Tasmania has yet to open applications or formally announce its policy; however, several state governments have indicated that their 2023-24 policies will not differ greatly from those of 2022-23. So below we’ll use the 2022-23 rules as a guide to walk you through them. NSW (New South Wales)Subclass 190 basic requirements:NSW uses an invitation system. The basic process is: first lodge an EOI and tick NSW within it. NSW officials periodically pick candidates from the EOI system. If they decide you’re the talent they want, they’ll send you a pre-invitation email inviting you to apply for NSW state nomination; you then submit your documents, and once the state government is satisfied it issues a formal nomination, after which the next step is lodging the visa application.If you never receive a pre-invitation email, you never gain the eligibility to formally lodge for state nomination.In theory NSW can pick whichever occupation it likes; it does not publish its selection criteria, and won’t even tell you when the next round of pre-invitations will go out — in short, it’s highly random. As an applicant, all you can do is meet the NSW basic requirements, lodge your EOI, then quietly wait for NSW to call your number — and as long as it doesn’t, keep waiting.Subclass 491 basic requirements: currently split into the following two pathways:1) Pathway 1 – Apply directly to an RDA office, meaning that if you meet the requirements you can lodge directly with the regional state government. In 2022-23 this channel allowed direct lodgement, skipping the wait for a pre-invitationPathway 1 is further divided into the following two streams:A. Stream A: requires the occupation to be on the NSW Subclass 491 main list, that you are currently working — and have worked for 12 months or more — in your nominated occupation in regional NSW, with an annual salary of at least $53,900.B. Stream B: requires the occupation to be on the NSW Subclass 491 Stream B list (which includes a number of common offshore occupations, e.g. HR), that you meet the list’s minimum points and work-experience requirements, and that you currently reside in NSW or have been offshore for at least 3 months.2) Pathway 2 – Be invited by Investment NSW, meaning that once you meet the basic requirements you lodge your EOI and then, just like the Subclass 190 invitation system described above, passively wait to be called. VIC (Victoria)Both Subclass 190 and 491 use an invitation system. Victoria has its own ROI (Registration of Interest) system, requiring applicants to submit their interest in the ROI system and then wait for the Victorian government to select from it。For 2022-23 the Victorian state-nomination occupation list used the Department’s list (meaning any occupation on the migration list can be lodged — over 400 occupations in total), and you only needed to meet the Department’s minimum requirements. So in theory, with 4 bands of 6, a skills assessment and a total of 65 points, you could lodge in Victoria’s ROI system and then passively wait for an invitation.The Victorian government says it does not look at EOI scores, but instead reviews applicants’ work experience, income, language and partner attributes, etc. from the ROI (if these attributes are strong, the score won’t be low anyway), or it simply picks the occupations it favours (e.g. nursing, teaching and so on)。 QLD (Queensland)Queensland also uses an invitation system similar to NSW, split into 4 streams. For the first 3 streams, Subclass 190 requires a total of 80 points or more, and Subclass 491 requires 65:1. Skilled workers living in Queensland – Subclass 190 requires the applicant to be currently working in QLD and to have done so for the past 6 months; Subclass 491 requires 3 months.2. Skilled workers living offshore – requires the occupation to be on Queensland’s offshore list, a language level equivalent to 4 bands of 7, more than 3 years’ work experience, and that you are currently still employed.3. Graduates of a Queensland university – the stream for local graduates, with different requirements for different qualifications. A local PhD with a skills assessment can apply; a Master’s must be in a STEM field with work related to the nominated occupation to secure Subclass 190, otherwise only Subclass 491 at most; a Bachelor’s receives only Subclass 491.4. Small business owners operating in regional Queensland – this is the stream for running a small business in a regional area; it offers only Subclass 491 and suits accountants better, so we won’t expand on it here. WA (Western Australia)Western Australia also uses an invitation system similar to NSW, where everyone competes on points. It is mainly split into three streams — General Stream 1 and 2, plus a local-graduate stream. Each stream has its own different occupation list.Stream 1 covers less common fields such as healthcare; the core requirement is at least 1 year of relevant work experience. Subclass 190 requires a local job offer, while Subclass 491 has no job-offer requirement.Stream 2 covers most of the familiar occupations such as accounting, IT and engineering, requires no relevant work experience, requires a local job offer for Subclass 190, and has no job-offer requirement for Subclass 491.The graduate stream only requires you to meet the Department’s basic requirements, after which everyone competes on points. On the face of it, WA’s lodgement and points requirements are relatively low, and its quota is second only to NSW and Victoria — especially Subclass 491, which has no job-offer requirement. Even interstate or offshore applicants can apply. In 2022-23, however, they insisted on inviting only people who had already moved to WA under General Stream 2. ACT (Australian Capital Territory)The ACT uses its own Matrix points system; the EOI score required for the ACT is the minimum of just 65 points, and candidates are selected via the Matrix score. By the end of 2022-23 the Matrix scores had become very low — hardly competitive at all.Local international graduates, or those who have moved from interstate and stayed long enough, find it relatively easy to accumulate enough points if they have relevant work in a listed occupation; outside of accounting, Subclass 190 is very promising.For offshore applicants the more realistic option is Subclass 491, since it has been changed to require only 1 year of relevant work experience and a language level of 4 bands of 6, with Matrix invitation scores now as low as 50-60 points to receive an invitation. TAS (Tasmania)Tasmania has already opened for 2023-24, continuing to use its own ROI system, which grades applicants into three tiers — Gold, Green and Orange. Gold and Green obtain invitations easily, and in the latter part of 2022-23 it had already loosened up considerably.Tasmania’s core requirement is still that you be onshore there; next is having a job — the higher the income the better, and the more in-demand the occupation the better. That said, Tasmania is relatively unfriendly to offshore applicants, requiring a job offer and willing to grant only Subclass 491. SA (South Australia)South Australia is fairly friendly to local graduates and local residents (those who have moved from interstate): as long as you meet the requirements you can lodge a state-nomination application directly, without the invitation system used by the earlier states. For offshore applicants, however, it uses the same invitation system as NSW — it issues a large number of Subclass 491 places in particular, though the data is not very transparent.South Australian state nomination is split into several streams, mainly the local-graduate and local-worker streams. The requirements for local graduates are relatively simple: 6 months of work related to the nominated occupation qualifies you for Subclass 190, and 3 months for Subclass 491. Local workers usually need 24 months of work (e.g. IT) or 12 months (e.g. teachers) to qualify for Subclass 190, while nursing requires only 6 months. The EOI score only needs to be 65. NT (Northern Territory)The Northern Territory is very friendly to local graduates, but requires you to have graduated in the NT for a full six months before applying (no invitation system — you can apply directly once you meet the Department’s minimum requirements). The NT, formerly rather exclusionary, departed from its usual stance in 2022-23 to welcome overseas applicants, offering them 3 Subclass 491 channels, the most broadly applicable of which is the Priority occupation stream, with very low invitation scores; the basic requirement is at least 1 year of work experience in the nominated occupation, with some occupations carrying higher special requirements.
That said, the NT has a stream exclusively for overseas applicants called MINT, with the minimum investment raised to AUD 520,000 and a venture-investment term of 12 years. It offers a fast track to Subclass 190 (subject, of course, to also meeting the Department’s most basic requirements). This stream originally allowed only purely offshore applicants, but this financial year it has also opened to former international graduates and onshore applicants under different requirements, though invitations still favour the former。
Carrying over from the past financial year to now, this may well be a rare window of opportunity — a season of a hundred flowers in bloom unseen in recent years! Completing the journey from lodgement to invitation to grant within a single year is not out of reach. Start with your skills assessment and preparing for your language test — and if you need your whole migration plan and process assessed, add our client service team below:
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