South Australian Developers Pty Ltd ATF South Australian Developers Unit Trust (Migration)

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) considered an application by South Australian Developers Pty Ltd ATF South Australian Developers Unit Trust (the applicant) to review a decision to refuse the nomination of a position under the Temporary Residence Transition nomination stream. The applicant sought approval for the nomination of Ms Rajwant Kaur as a Hairdresser.

The primary legal issue before the Tribunal was whether the applicant had met the training requirements stipulated in regulation 5.19(3)(f) of the Migration Regulations 1994. This regulation requires a standard business sponsor to have fulfilled commitments and complied with obligations relating to training Australians, either by spending at least two per cent of payroll on payments to an industry training fund or at least one per cent of payroll on training Australian citizens or permanent residents.

The Tribunal reasoned that the applicant, approved as a standard business sponsor in 2014, had claimed payroll expenditure of $102,159 for the 12 months prior to the nomination application. However, the applicant only claimed to have paid $2,050 towards training Australian citizens or permanent residents. The delegate was not satisfied that verifiable evidence supported these claims and found that the applicant had not met the training benchmark of either one per cent of payroll for industry training funds or one per cent of payroll for training employees. The applicant confirmed at the hearing that the delegate's decision was attached to the review application.

Consequently, the Tribunal affirmed the decision under review to refuse the nomination, finding that the applicant had not satisfied the requirements of regulation 5.19(3).