Anthony Albanese announces changes to Australia-UK work visa rules
Anthony Albanese has announced a shift in Aus-UK work visa rules, while stepping out in London with his partner. See photos.
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Anthony Albanese said it was “game on” for Australian businesses in the United Kingdom under a new trade deal, while also announcing a major change to work visa rules for both countries.
Coming into effect on June 1, the bilateral deal will lift tax tariffs on Australian exports into Britain.
To promote the new deal, the prime minister visited an Australian bakery in London that will benefit from a 13 per cent reduction on the costs of importing Aussie cheese, meats, and seafoods, and a 15 per cent reduction on the cost of wines.
“Bondi Green is a great Australian success story of Pru who travelled here with a different objective in life as a former lawyer and is still here,” Mr Albanese, who is in London for the King’s Coronation on Saturday, said.
“The FTA is about Australia and the United Kingdom getting greater access to this market for Australian products, greater access for our beef, for our sheep products, for our wine, and other products,” he said.
“As part of the FTA we will change some of the labour market so that instead of being 30 years of age to get that temporary visa, we’ll increase it up to 35 in both countries, and extend it to three years so that people can come here, get that real experience over a longer period of time.”
Separately to the deal, the UK and Australia have signed a memorandum of understanding allowing Britons aged 18 to 35 to travel and work in Australia for up to three years.
They will also no longer have to work on a farm to stay for longer periods.
Australians aged between 21 and 45 can do the same in Britain.
A meeting at 10 Downing Street on Friday with British Prime Minister Government Rishi Sunak will move to finalise the processes of the FTA ahead of the coronation for the May 31st deadline. From June 1 it’s “game on.”
“That will be the date Australian companies can push for greater benefit here with more wine, more cheap products, more seafood, more spices, more products from Australia to be present here,” Mr Albanese said.
“It’s is a win-win, a win for Australia and a win for the United Kingdom. When you take off tariffs on goods you make them cheaper for both countries.”
Bondi Green owner Ms Freeman said she was looking forward to introducing more Asian flavours into her dishes once the agreement facilitates movement of produce.
“More fish, great meat and then big Asian flavours, for 10 years I’ve been trying to get some great Australian products like Matilda cheese made on the farm next to mine in Victoria,” she said.
‘JOBS AND MORE JOBS’: ALBO HAILS AUKUS DEAL
Nuclear-powered submarines were as much about Australia’s national security as they were about creating thousands of jobs for a future economy, Anthony Albanese has said.
The prime minister was visiting UK’s largest shipyard in the port town of Barrow-in-Furness in northern England where his controversial $368bn AUKUS trilateral security pact will begin.
Touring the plant with Britain’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, he got a glimpse of how Australia’s largest ever Defence project could roll out as he likened it to the post war boom of the car industry.
“AUKUS is more than our national security, it’s about jobs and economic prosperity, jobs for their lifetime. It’s about jobs and more jobs,” Mr Albanese enthused.
“The first product will begin to roll off here (Barrow-in-Furness) in the 2030s and in the 2040s in Australia but we will start on construction of the transformation in Osborne in South Australia next year.
“We regard the development of an advanced, highly sophisticated manufacturing capability in Australia as having implications not just for our defence but for other industries as well, and I see this as being very similar to what the car industry provided for Australia in the post-war period.
“It is easy to underestimate the scale of what’s happening here and the impact it has on this local community.”
Of Barrow’s 60,000 population, 11,000 are employed at the shipyard.
The AUKUS pact was sealed in March in a trilateral defence agreement between the US, UK and Australia to help Australia establish a nuclear-powered submarine program ostensibly to counter China’s coercive military expansion into the Pacific.
The first Australian-built nuclear-powered submarines will be British-designed but fitted out with US combat systems including vertical Tomahawk cruise missile launch capabilities.
The SSN-AUKUS class will take over from the existing Royal Navy’s Astute-class boats when they enter into operation within the next decade and in the meantime the Federal Government will buy at least three second-hand American built submarines.
Mr Albanese said Australia’s challenge would be to recruit and train more than 5000 skilled workers and staying within budget to deliver the boats. Defence has factored in a 50 per cent $213bn “contingency” into the $368bn program.
Australia will send young apprentices to the UK to learn the craft and has already had personnel exchanges to teach Royal Australia Navy submariners how to operate the boat.
Mr Wallace joked that he “feared” that meant Australia would steal his town’s workforce.
“I’m delighted Australia is joining the (AUKUS) club with the United States – this is serious business and a big endeavour. If Australia gets delayed, my submarines get delayed,” he said.
“My only fear is that you come over here to sign up workers and take them over there!”
Meanwhile, Mr Albanese, who is in the UK to attend the coronation of King Charles, reiterated his commitment to Australia becoming a Republic, but said he would swear the oath of allegiance to the new King at the coronation on Saturday.
“I support an Australian as Australia’s head of state,” Mr Albanese said.
“That doesn’t mean that I don’t respect the institutions and it certainly doesn’t mean I don’t respect King Charles.”
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