What do the 457 changes really mean for hospitality?

It's a few days since Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the planned abolition of the 457 visa and the hospitality industry went into meltdown.

The panic was immediate. Some of it, for good reason. Tourism Australia is hanging its hat and a bucket load of cash on our food and beverage industry. The industry, meanwhile, is in the grip of a major skills drought that was predicted to get worse all on its own, even before the 457 changes were announced.

A large number of our hospitality workforce is currently here under the 457 visa. Understandably, Tuesday's announcement saw a lot of sky-is-falling rhetoric. Now we've had a chance to breathe (and actually read the fine print), how is this really going to play out?

Some of the panic is misplaced. A number of chefs like Colin Fassnidge and Duncan Welgemoed, of Africola, have highlighted their journey to Australian restaurant royalty was via a 457. The thing is, that is not off the cards.

Very few hospitality-related jobs were among the professions to be cut from eligibility. It's bad news if you're a blacksmith, sail maker, and deer farmer. But chefs, now with three years' experience instead of two, still make the cut.

The 457 as it was granted eligible workers four years. They were eligible for permanent residency after two. By March 2018, this will be replaced by two Temporary Skills Shortage visas – a short term, two-year visa for some professions and the medium and long term four-year visa for others.

Chefs made the medium to long-term list. But, a huge number of agricultural jobs, cafe or restaurant managers, cooks, bakers and pastrycooks are now on the short-term list.

Given that it appears that permanent residency applications now only apply after three years, there is concern that this may wipe out the pathway for anyone on the two-year visa. This is yet to be confirmed, but if true that makes Australia a lot less attractive to the likes of say, the new gun front of house manager at Attica, recruited from Eleven Madison Park. Probably someone we'd consider an asset, no?

A series of caveats will also apply. Chefs and cooks cannot apply to establishments classified as fast food and take away joints, and limited service restaurants including "fast casual restaurants" and bars with a limited food offering.

Theoretically, the tightening of controls is supposed to fix some problems. The collection of Tax File Numbers is designed to ensure employers are paying minimum market salary, not blackmailing employees with the promise of permanent residency.

The 457 as it was was already problematic for the industry. The minimum salary as it stands is $54,000. Joel Valvasori, of Perth's Lulu la Delizia, points out, "That suggests at a minimum a senior chef de partie. If they raise the minimum wage for it further, then you're only looking at sous chef levels. We need more soldiers though. We already have enough young entitled Australian chefs to fill the senior positions."

As for the wild suggestion that tighter restrictions will mean more jobs for Australians, all 457 visa holders make up less than 1 per cent of the workforce. Australians can already apply for jobs as waiters, chefs, cooks and fast food workers and don't require huge sponsorship fees. They aren't applying, or, they don't stay in lower level positions. Despite what MasterChef has taught us, kitchen work is hot, hard and often unrewarding. Often the only way you can get a line cook to stay is to have them contracted in on the promise of permanent residency.