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Australia invites you to apply for permanent residence through a Business Talent visa. ​​These visas can provide businessmen that have a Significant Business History with permanent residency to establish a new (or develop an existing) business in Australia that can deliver exceptional economic benefits to the country and generate jobs.

Successful applicants will:

• Have the opportunity to sponsor eligible relatives for permanent residency to live and work in Australia.
• Be able to travel freely within and out of Australia while managing their day-to-day business directly or through an authorised representative. [1]

Australia also has many benefits for domestic and international businesses, which includes:

• A stable political and legal environment, ranked as one of the top ten stable countries in the world based on its defence, economy and system power.[2]
• A weaker Australian dollar in the past three years, making assets in Australia substantially cheaper for foreign investors to acquire and operate.
• Favourable time zones due to its geographical location. Specifically, Western Australia is in the same time zone as about 60% of the world’s population making international business with Asia much more convenient.

For all states and territories in Australia, the criteria for applicants to be considered as having a Significant Business History is that they have net business and personal assets of at least AUD1.5 million and an annual business turnover of at least AUD3 million.[3]Each state or territory will then impose additional requirements relevant to their state.

Why Western Australia?

Western Australia has some of the most favourable requirements for prospective applicants.[4]For example:

• Western Australia only requires AUD1 million of net assets to be in business within the state, unlike Victoria (AUD2 million) and New South Wales (AUD3 million).
• Western Australia only restricts those businesses that exist only for the provision of rental properties or passive investment unlike other states, such as Victoria, which place additional restrictions on general importing, exporting of commodities and smaller project based property development businesses.

Generally, Western Australia requires the creation of at least one (1) new job for any qualifying business and two (2) new jobs for a property development business. Other states, such as New South Wales, require as many as five (5) jobs created within the city of Sydney or three jobs created in regional New South Wales.

Applications for Business Talent visas are assessed on a case-by-case basis and exemptions for certain requirement may be extended to applicants based on their individual applications and reasoning. To maximise your chances for a successful application and to find out how you can expand your business to Australia, get in touch with us at Tang Law in Northbridge.

[1] See Re Sheik Anis Iqbal and Minister For Immigration And Citizenship [2010] AATA 1029; Huang v Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs [2002] AATA 656.

[2] http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking [as at 6 January 2017], https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/non-economic-data/most-peaceful-countries?page=2 [as at 6 January 2017].

[3] Migration Regulations 1994 (Cth) sch 2, ‘Subclass 132 — Business Talent’

[4]For a list of Western Australian requirements, please refer to http://www.businessmigration.wa.gov.au/?cat=business-migration&page=visa-132-business-talent