Yesterday’s invitation round was the secondSubclass 189 roundissued by the Department of Home Affairs this financial year, and the numbers continued to bring welcome surprises. However, on the occupation and points front, based on information available to us,a large number of offshore EOIs with low points received invitations,particularly in popular engineering fields such as civil, mechanical, and engineering technologist (ET), where offshore applicants with just 65 points were invited.Onshore applicants in the same occupation needed 85 or 90 points to receive an invitation, and even then, only a rare few were selected.
This financial year’s Subclass 189onshore/offshore imbalance
In fact, the disparity between onshore and offshore applicants already emerged in the first invitation round,except that at the time, the occupations affected were relatively niche —the three COVID-era critical shortage occupations and most trade occupations. The most obvious example was chef: the Department’s official figures showed that no onshore applicants in that occupation received an invitation, while offshore applicants with just 65 points were invited.
Even then, many people were already asking: does the Department want all the chefs to leave Australia?
By the second invitation round, more occupations were issued invitations, the unfairness spread across a wider range of fields, and the issue attracted much broader attention.Engineers were hit hardest — even those with 90 or even 95 points, if they had nominated Australia as their country of residence, received invitations only in very small numbers, if at all.
In contrast, offshore applicants flooded in across various engineering occupations with a base score of just 65 points, no work experience, and in many cases never having set foot in Australia, yet they received invitations.
After this happened, many clients came to us asking: ‘Should I leave Australia? If leaving Australia means I’ll get an invitation, how long do I need to be offshore?’
Does the Department of Home Affairs even follow its own rules for issuing invitations?
Looking back at past invitation rounds — including the invitation rules set out in the Department’s internal PAM — there is only one passage that speaks to invitation scores and cut-off issues.In short: higher points are prioritised; where points are equal, earlier submission date takes precedence.
Whether the overall Subclass 189 invitation framework is fair — particularly over the past two post-COVID years, where invitations have been issued selectively by occupation and out of order — we will not comment on that here.
The Department has historically shown preferences for certain occupations, including currently granting some occupations higher priority for onshore invitations or even manually selecting specific occupations to receive invitations. This is precisely why accounting, IT, and engineering barely received any invitations over the two years prior to this round.
Perhaps, during extraordinary times, certain specific occupations are genuinely needed — we can understand that.
Perhaps some applicants do not have particularly high points scores, but their work experience and language proficiency have genuinely impressed the Department.
But the Department has never previously issued invitations to lower-scoring applicants in the same occupation and occupation code simply because of the difference between being onshore or offshore.Does an applicant’s suitability and merit come down to nothing more than the residential address they entered in their application?
Whether this practice reaches the threshold of violating the legislation, we will not comment on — after all, over the past two years we have witnessed the Department amend the legislation in various ways.
But the current situationeffectively means the Department itself has torn up the rules of its own game—with no explanation, no advance notice,and without even a defensible reason behind it. This is deeply unfair — one could even say it is unconscionable.
Furthermore, what the Australian Government is doing now is, of course, primarily aimed at attracting more people to Australia. But consider this: the reason for the enormous employment gap right now — with so many employers unable to find staff — is largely that so many people have already left Australia.Over the past two years, nearly 500,000 people have left Australia, and the gap between job vacancies and job seekers has reached 340,000 to 400,000.
The primary reason people left was deep disillusionment with Australia, and a sense that Australia’s policies fell far short of the genuine intent shown by countries such as Canada and New Zealand.
After New Zealand’s ‘amnesty’ last year, we also organised a petition, calling on Australia to introduce a similar beneficial policy. But the previous Australian government chose to ignore the demands of the more than 10,000 people who participated in that petition, which directly led many people to lose hope and leave.
The current approach is blunt and heavy-handed.The Department may only be thinking about demonstrating good faith to offshore applicants, while disregarding the far greater number of onshore applicants.We will set aside, for now, how many of the offshore applicants who received invitations will actually accept them.The current approach is like filling a bucket from the outside while leaving a hole in the bottom that keeps draining— will this really make a meaningful difference in addressing Australia’s employment shortage?
Petition:
We call on the Department of Home Affairs to
issue Subclass 189 invitations fairly
There is no denying that the new government has put in considerable work and effort since taking office — over the past few months, many people have been helped across the line, and more people have reason for hope.
But I sincerely hope that the Australian Government and the Department of Home Affairs will treat more compassionately those onshore applicants who stood by Australia throughout the pandemic —and who are still holding on right now.Onshore applicants have diligently continued to work throughout the pandemic, paying taxes to support the Australian economy, while receiving few of the subsidies and support measures that were on offer.Is this what that commitment has earned them — to be ignored, pushed to the back of the queue, and overlooked?
We also hope that invitations can be issued to popular applicant groups such as those in accounting and IT.These applicants have worked hard to find relevant employment, sat English language tests, accumulated 95 or even 100 points, and done everything within their power to strengthen their applications. Yet for a full two and a half years, regardless of whether they were onshore or offshore, the Subclass 189 programme has not issued them a single invitation. This too is deeply unfair.
To this end, our firm has launched a petition in response to this unfair situation. We call on the Department of Home Affairs to issue invitations fairly — making the process more open, transparent, and just — and we hope that such obvious inequities do not appear in future invitation rounds.
Long-press the QR code
to join our petition
and make your voice heard for onshore applicants!
