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RAAA on disbandment of 457 visas -

By RAAA CEO Mike Higgins, via the Oz: 

Unintended consequences of 457 visa changes could ground airlines

REX have invested heavily in a pilot training school. Picture: Grahame Hutchison.

• Mike Higgins
  
• The Australian
  
• 12:00AM April 28, 2017
  

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection issued a media release on April 18 announcing the abolition and replacement of the Temporary Work Visa (457). The document includes about 20 reforms, summarised in dot points. The Regional Aviation Association of Australia agrees with about 85 per cent of these.

The RAAA welcomes the government’s review of all programs from time to time to ensure they remain fit for purpose, have not drifted in scope and still address the initial problem. However, the published changes have some serious unintended consequences for many regional airline and charter operators. In a nutshell, pilots and avionic engineers are now totally excluded, while airframe/engine engineers are only eligible for temporary visas without any access to residency, which makes it virtually impossible to employ them.

Examples include Chartair, a large operator in the Northern Territory. Since November 2015, they have had a massive turnover of pilots — of the 31 crew with the business at that time, only four of them remain.

They have lost 12 experienced pilots to large Australian national carriers in the past 12 months alone. The large Australian carriers don’t see an end to this recruitment drive any time soon, with a well-known international carrier recruiting some 1200 pilots by years end. The internationals recruit experienced pilots from the large Australian carriers and they in turn recruit experienced pilots from our member organisations. Chartair currently have parked three of their biggest aircraft because they don’t have crew for them!

Chartair is not unique in its role within the industry. Most Regional Aviation Association of Australia member airlines take in entry-level pilots and offer them a career path through small single pistons, small twins, up to single and twin turbines. Although they are all too aware of their position in the aviation food chain, they are proud of their record in providing high-quality pilots for the Australian national carriers. However, they are at that stage where our ranks at the upper middle and senior pilot levels are so depleted that overseas candidates locked in for four years on a visa were about the only solution to get them through this crazy phase of recruiting by the major carriers around the world.

Therefore, they currently have seriously limited capabilities in-house for check and training and need desperately to bring in contractors to cover these vital roles. However, with the changes to the 457 visa they will not be able to sponsor these pilots to undertake vital roles for the survival of their businesses.

Perhaps the largest (in terms of number of aircraft) RAAA member is Regional Express and they may have the most compelling case. REX have invested heavily in a pilot training school and take most of the Australian graduates into their airline.

The international and Australian national carrier recruitment activity mentioned above has been so intense that this member soon won’t have a sufficient number of experienced captains to continue the training of the first officers. So we will see aircraft and first officers grounded because they can no longer employ direct entry captains, thanks to the 457 changes.

In the mid-1970s Qantas would routinely train over 200 aircraft maintenance engineers per year, and I was fortunate to be one of them. They now train 15 per year. This is not a criticism of Qantas, as their engineering business model has had to change over the intervening period due to changes in technology and a host of other reasons.

The fact is, though, that the once vibrant training ground has all but vanished. It is now incumbent on the smaller end of town to take a more active role in producing engineers.

This is widely recognised and commendable efforts are being made by industry. However, a combination of ‘‘centres of excellence’’ (silos) within both the federal and state governments, with no single controlling mind, has resulted in a gridlock where it is not possible for the Civil Aviation Safety Authority to issue licences to graduating apprentices.

The RAAA has been campaigning for some time and is working very closely with the Australian Aviation Maintenance Repair and Overhaul Business Association, the Licensed Aircraft Maintenance Engineers association, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and soon the federal and state education departments to address this situation. So it was pleasing to read a recent release from the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport on Aviation training issues.

The document refers to the recent Aviation Workforce Skills Study which clearly articulates a need to ‘‘develop practical and workable solutions to overcome any shortfalls in the supply of professionally trained staff’’. ‘‘I look forward to working with the Department of Education and Training.”

Commendable indeed, yet at the same time another arm of the government makes these breathtaking changes to 457 that are designed to kill jobs and growth in our sector of the industry. The RAAA remains willing and able to be a part of the solution and would welcome an urgent review of these new arrangements.

MTF...P2