Migration Point-in-Time Service Updates

The Migration Point-in-Time Service has been updated to include the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Employer Compliance) Act 2024 (Cth) (Act 1 of 2024).

Act 1 of 2024

This Act aims to complement existing protections for vulnerable temporary migrant workers under Australia’s workplace laws, ensuring temporary migrant workers in Australia are appropriately empowered to address unlawful conduct in the workplace. It also aims to improve employer compliance using both deterrence and remediation, and to protect temporary migrant workers from employers that have been found to have engaged in serious, deliberate or repeated non-compliance.

The Act makes substantive amendments to the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) (the Migration Act), including amendments to:

• establish new criminal offences and associated civil penalty provisions for a person who unduly influences, unduly pressures, or coerces a non-citizen to:
• breach a work-related condition of their visa; or
• accept an exploitative work arrangement to meet a work-related condition of their visa;
• introduce a new mechanism to allow the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, or an authorised delegate, to prohibit an employer from employing any additional non-citizens for specified period in certain circumstances;
• introduce a mechanism to publish the names and relevant details of employers subjected to the proposed prohibition; and
• repeal section 235 of the Migration Act.

These amendments have been updated in the Point-in-Time Migration Service current to 28 February 2024. (NB: Subscription required).

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