This executive took a risk and was hired on a backpacker visa
When Californian Ines Lizaur accepted a job to lead manufacturing at Australian start-up Vow, she had to enter the country on a working holiday visa – usually the domain of backpackers working in bars or picking fruit.
The executive, who was lured away from building rockets for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, took the leap without knowing if she would be able to stay in Australia long-term, relying on the short-term visa while she navigated the complexities of its migration system.
George Peppou, CEO of Vow and head of manufacturing Ines Lizaur are developing the start-up’s manufacturing facility in Alexandria. Peter Rae
“I packed up my whole life and moved to a foreign country with no real guarantee that I could stay beyond that first year,” Ms Lizaur said.
“Because I was so excited about Vow and they were so supportive, I was willing to move without a lot of clarity, but I can imagine a number of other specialists like me would lean towards turning down an offer because it was so difficult to navigate and there’s a lack of clarity and certainty within the system.”
After a long-running campaign to overhaul Australia’s visa system, the tech sector will be able to fast track visas for workers like Ms Lizaur.
Under changes announced on Monday, the Albanese government will create a new specialist skills pathway that allows employers to bring in migrants earning more than $135,000 a year.
Unlike other skilled migrant visas, applicants in the high-income stream do not have to work in areas of skills shortage, and their visas will be approved in a median time of just seven days.
The changes are a victory for the Tech Council of Australia, which has long campaigned for faster processing times and a pathway to permanent residency for visa holders to help ease the sector’s talent shortage.
“Equivalent economies such as Canada and the UK already have five- to 10-day service standards and much clearer paths to permanent residency,” council chief executive Kate Pounder said.
“That has put Australia at a disadvantage globally in attracting top talent. With this change, Australia has confirmed we’re the equal of any nation for attracting skilled workers in high demand.”
Ms Lizaur’s employer, George Peppou, a co-founder of Vow, said the changes would allow him to fill more roles that were essential for operating a new multimillion-dollar facility in Sydney’s Alexandria where the company will grow meat from animal cells.
Vow, which this year made meat from mammoth DNA, is likely to use the new visa pathway to hire food material scientists and industrial automation experts that it cannot find domestically.
“You meet these candidates in the US that have hopped between four or five massive scale-up companies like Tesla and Rivian – and now they’re at an aerospace company – and they’ve been through the process of building out half a dozen factories in five years,” Mr Peppou said.
“That level of experience is very hard to find locally.”
Mr Peppou said he would like to see the changes implemented quickly, saying they would make a big difference to companies like his that are competing against US and European businesses for talent.
“Being able to give candidates some kind of certainty and clarity on what that pathway looks like is very important to me personally … I need to be able to authentically assure them that they’re not going to be stuck in limbo,” he said.
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