Adland thrown government lifeline, with four-year visas to help cover skills shortage
The Media Federation of Australia (MFA) and Communications Council have welcomed the introduction of a five-year labour agreement for the advertising industry.
Under the Advertising Industry Labour Agreement (AILA), approved businesses in the industry will be able to sponsor overseas workers for roles that cannot be filled by the local market.
MFA CEO Sophie Madden said while the industry supports the local market, we didn’t have the numbers to properly resource the industry.
“The Australian advertising industry strongly supports Australian jobs first. But if we’re to maintain our status as one of the top advertising countries around the world, we need to be able to access the best-experienced talent to cover skill shortages that we can’t either grow or have available here,” Madden said.
The labour agreement will last for five years
Communications Council CEO Tony Hale agreed, stating that the MFA and Communications Council had found an “industry-wide answer to a very complex problem”.
“We are all very excited to have reached this agreement with the Department of Home Affairs and would like to thank them for working with us to develop a solution that allows the industry to continue to compete effectively and grow,” Hale said.
The Department of Home Affairs will oversee the AILA, which will include approving individual company labour agreements and visa applications. There will be a cap of 300 approved visas per year under the labour agreement.
The MFA and Communications Council will have a joint role managing the pre-vetting process to ensure advertising agencies looking to sponsor foreign talent meet all criteria. Employers must ensure at least 75% of their workforce is Australian and offer a minimum salary of $85,000 to sponsored workers.
There are five roles eligible for visas, including: advertising specialist, graphic designer, copywriter, multimedia designer and web developer.
In 2017, the government replaced the 457 visa with a new temporary skills shortage visa. In March 2018, a joint MFA and Communications Council report revealed that since the change, there had been an increase in advertising vacancy rates and staff workload.
Brittney Rigby was Mumbrella's deputy managing editor - news and analysis. She left Mumbrella in April 2021.
Linkedin
topics
457 visa
advertising industry labour agreement
Communications Council
Department of Home Affairs
Labour agreement
Media Federation
MFA
Sophie Madden
TCC
Tony Hale
TSS visa
What “roles that can’t be filled”? What rubbish. When “Ad-Land” stops its strict hiring policy of employees having to be 18-30 years old who’ll work 14 hour days for 1990 salaries, they’ll find there’s ample talent available. Why the industry has to absorb more of this endless conga-line of failed cockney blaggers who couldn’t crack a job back in the UK, is anyone’s guess.
User ID not verified.
#VisasForGeezers
User ID not verified.
this is prejudiced nonsense.
we need overseas talent for two key reasons, Structural and Competitive.
Structural: the industry doesn’t invest in enough graduate and entry level talent (mainly because clients won’t fund them) Combine this with the natural attrition of talent leaving the industry, the significant losses our industry has from talent moving overseas & the challenges that the industry has in importing talent from other related industries within Australia and we need an annual influx of overseas talent purely to fill the gaps.
Competitive: agencies succeed or die on the back of the quality of the people working in them and the industry is results driven and highly competitive. Leaders and managers should have the right to find the best possible talent to work for them to give them a competitive advantage and to allow them to meet the needs of their clients. It’s good for their companies and clients if they have access to a larger talent pool and it’s good for our industry to be able to bring in the best people from around the world to add to the talent we already have here.
User ID not verified.
Is this really the time to publish racial vitriol like this? And from a person lacking the courage to put their name to such bigotry!
User ID not verified.
Good one Bob. Love to be an Aussie under your stewardship. Literal evidence of why you’d be wise to employ ‘foreigners’ over unskilled, out of their depth clowns, and eventually turn that skills gap around, bringing through a viable internationally capable workforce. I think we’re unlikely to see Bob in the mix when we get there though…
User ID not verified.
Technically xenophobic not racist, so permissible.
User ID not verified.
I agree Nick. I had a post countering his post that somehow didn’t make it through the screening.