Processing times for the visa most international artists and crew use to work in Australia have more than doubled, with no announcement and no warning.
The Department of Home Affairs visa processing times tool now shows the Temporary Activity visa (subclass 408), Entertainment Activities stream, at 24 days for 50 per cent of applications and 47 days for 90 per cent. Until this week the published figure sat at 20 days. It moved overnight.
The 47 days is only part of the wait. Applications in the Entertainment Activities stream need a consultation or approval letter from the relevant union, usually the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, before the visa application can be lodged at all. MEAA is currently running at five to 14 business days on those. Put the two together and the sector is now looking at roughly 12 weeks from starting the paperwork to holding a visa.
Twelve weeks does not match how touring actually works. Support slots get confirmed inside a month. Festival line-ups shift as artists drop out and replacements come in. Crew get added late, and sometimes very late. The added problem is that after submission, any changes require a new submission, new costs and a new waiting period.
We need your numbers
ALMBC has an anonymous survey open collecting real data on music industry visa applications, covering both inbound applications to work in Australia and Australian artists and crew applying for visas overseas. It asks for lodgement and decision dates, outcomes, whether further information was requested, and how many times applicants had to escalate to get an answer.
The more real cases we hold, the harder the case we can put to Home Affairs, because “it feels slower” carries nowhere near the weight of a hundred documented applications with dates attached.
If you have applied for a music industry visa in the past couple of years, in either direction, please fill it in. It takes a few minutes and you can submit it completely anonymously, with your name and email optional.
ALMBC is continuing to work with migration agents and industry on this and will keep members updated as we know more.
