Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, , 6:58:31 to 7:03:05
The department details recent consultations with the National Farmers Federation and tourism industry groups regarding the design of the visa ballot system, emphasizing the need for simplicity and certainty for regional employers.
Topics: National Farmers Federation, Tourism
Speakers: Tiali Goodchild, Hon Jonathon Duniam, Elissa Walker
Okay, and in terms of consultation with stakeholders, and we had some talk about farmers before. I'm sure there'd be people from the hospitality and visitor economy sector as well that would be interested. Uh there's the communication program. But I just want to know what are they going to see this thing before it's launched? Are we working with them on how it'll work? Have you told them how it'll work?
Thanks, Senator. So we are working with them on how it will work. They obviously won't see the IT changes, they're internal to us. So um and there's a number of systems that get changed, but that is just so that the staff in my division will be able to randomly draw from the ballots once it's agreed with our stakeholders on how that will work. So this month alone we've had over 14 stakeholder meetings with them.
Who are the stakeholders like NFF and groups like that?
Yeah, so yeah, with the farmers' federation as is one of them. So largely it's been predominantly with the um agriculture sector and with the tourism sector, but also with organizations such as Blaze Aid, um also um different kind of industry uh groups that um bring people in to do things like play cricket, to be honest with you. So um it is but largely it's been with agriculture and tourism as the two largest sectors that use working holiday maker.
Okay, so on notice if you could provide me the dates on which these consultations have occurred and who has Been a part of those consultations.
Yep, I'm happy to do that now.
Or would you look if you just maybe the dates? I'll just assume you've got to be able to do that.
So there's been a number of meetings. So I um I was present for four of them on the 7th of October. So one was the Australian Hotel Association and Accommodation Australia, one was the National Farmers Federation, one was Australian Tourism Industry Council, the other was Tourism and Transport Forum. And then on the 13th of October, we had hosted in the department two round tables, one in the morning with agriculture. And that included all the National Farmers Federation, Grain Growers Association, French Produce Australia, and Growers Association as well. Thank you. And we sought to consult with them on what their concerns were around a ballot process. And that also happened with tourism in the afternoon. And the three main themes that I would say that came out of that was looking for certainty, making sure we had people in the region. And then simplicity. So making sure the process was simple enough that people that were applying for a working holiday maker and also the employers that were using it could also understand it. So that goes to how we will build the system as well to make sure it's not overly complicated.
Have almost finished building the system, right?
No, we have not finished building the system.
Almost, though. Surely you're getting close. I mean we're a month away from operation.
We build the basic core operation of our system to enable it to be able to do a ballot. And then we will, once we have finished our consultations with the stakeholders, we will do the final changes to that system. But we have the core capability well underway.
Yep. Okay. And so you can't tell me at this point how much of the 12.4 million you have expended that was provided for this five months ago.
No, Senator will need on notice.
All right. Well, we'll wait and see how that goes. So there's no purchase of uh additional equipment here. It is literally just a design and using human resources to get there, is that correct?
That's correct. It's been built on all the existing immigration business applications that we use.
Okay. And you've taken on notice how many staff will be available or have been utilised and how many contractors. Okay. All right then. Thank you very much. Just before. Well, I was going to ask on this, of course, with regard to so moving away from that particular project. With regard to the announcements that were part of the 17th September announcement by the Minister, what modelling was done on the impact of each of those proposed changes on the eventual norm?