Weak trading figures — and the employer-sponsored nomination was still overturned

The client’s situation

The employer runs a nut-growing business. The company is not large, and our client is a core employee in its farm operation. Over the past few years, however, the business has been in its planting and development phase, so its financial statements showed weak trading results — in some years there was barely any meaningful revenue.

In May 2024 the client’s Subclass 482 nomination was refused. The case officer’s main concerns went straight to the employer’s trading and financial position: could a business with limited revenue and a small footprint over the past few years genuinely have an ongoing need to employ an overseas worker? And did the employer have the financial capacity to keep meeting that employee’s wages and the associated employment costs?

As soon as the refusal decision came through, we helped the client lodge an appeal to the ART in June 2024.

The hardest part of this appeal

The hardest part of this case was that we could not sidestep one objective fact: the employer’s trading figures for the past few years were weak.

Simply repeating that “the company needs this employee” or that “the employer will earn revenue later” was never going to answer the reasons for the refusal. We had to go further and prove two things: why the position was genuine and had long-term necessity even though turnover was modest, and why the employer still had the practical capacity to keep employing our client.

This appeal was therefore not a matter of adding a few more financial documents. It meant rebuilding the logic of the whole case from several angles: the operating model of the nut-growing business, the continuity of the position, the client’s actual work and the employer’s financial capacity.

How we cracked it: multiple Submissions + dozens of Supporting Documents

While preparing the ART appeal we worked through the refusal reasons point by point, prepared several Submissions built around the different issues in dispute, and assembled dozens of Supporting Documents — a complete body of evidence on the employer’s operations, the client’s actual work, the continuity of the position and future business need.

First, we focused on proving that the position had not been created just for the Subclass 482 application — it already existed within the employer’s real operations. The client had carried out nut-growing and farm operation duties continuously over a long period, both before the nomination was lodged and after it was refused. Drawing on the client’s work history, actual duties and the way the farm runs, we showed that the position rests on a genuine and ongoing business foundation.

The client was also not an optional extra but a core employee of the business. Long involved in the day-to-day running of the farm, the client knows the plantings, the crop growth and the daily management thoroughly, and the work bears directly on nut growing and the farm operating as it should. We therefore set out how important the client’s work is to the business, and why the employer has a real need to keep this position for the long term.

Another crucial opening was the nature of the nut-growing industry itself.

Nuts are not a crop that produces steady income the moment they go into the ground. From planting, through the trees growing, to reaching full production is a long cycle in its own right. A company’s turnover over the past few years therefore cannot fully represent the farm’s future productive capacity — still less can low revenue at this stage lead straight to the conclusion that the business has no genuine need for the role.

On that basis, and against the farm’s actual operations, we went further and explained why the position not only genuinely existed in the past but will continue to be needed as the crop keeps growing and the business develops.

At the same time, in answering the Department of Home Affairs’ doubts about the employer’s financial capacity, we did not rely on a single year’s turnover either. We re-explained the employer’s ability to keep meeting the wage cost of the position across several dimensions: company assets, operating investment, the stage the business has reached and future production.

In the end the ART accepted the core explanation of the case and decided to remit the Subclass 482 nomination back to the Department of Home Affairs for reconsideration — the appeal succeeded.

Whether an employer can sponsor is judged on several dimensions, not one

This case also speaks to the questions people often ask — “what turnover do you need to do a Subclass 482?”, “how big does a company have to be to sponsor?” In practice, whether an employer has the capacity and the need to sponsor an overseas worker cannot be judged on turnover and company size alone.

Different industries have different operating models and development cycles, and how important a position is to a business varies completely from role to role. What really counts is the business’s actual operations, the characteristics of its industry, the genuineness of the position and how long it will be needed, the work the employee performs, and the employer’s overall financial and employment capacity.

If you have a job in Australia but are unsure whether employer sponsorship is possible because of the company’s size, its turnover or its trading position, your specific company and role can be assessed further.