New Northern Territory DAMA for 5 years, over twice as many occupations and nominations

The Northern Territory (NT) was a pioneer for being the first state or territory to have a Designated Area Migration Agreement (DAMA) with the Department of Home Affairs so businesses operating in the territory, both large and small, could sponsor overseas nationals in occupation and situations that were not possible under the standard business sponsor regime.

Since then, DAMAs have been negotiated with 12 other regions with Western Australia being the only other state or territory to have a whole-of-jurisdiction DAMA that commenced on 1 July 2024. All DAMAs are in regional areas where unemployment is generally higher than in Australia’s larger capitals. Many occupations under DAMAs provide concessions to English language ability, salary, and age.

DAMAs are one of several different types of labour agreements. Labour agreements are separately negotiated agreements to allow organisations to sponsor overseas workers where other arrangements are not possible. Labour agreements have their own streams for the subclass 482 – Skills in Demand visa, subclass 494 – Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional (Provisional) visa, and subclass 186 - Employer Nomination Scheme visa.

The NT government has now successfully negotiated their third DAMA according to the latest media release from the Assistant Minister for Immigration. It starts today and will run until 30 June 2030. Their previous DAMA expired on 13 December 2024.

The NT DAMA III has increased the number of occupations available from 135 occupations to 325 occupations. It has also increased the number of nominations per year from 625 to 1500 nominations.

The benefits of DAMAs are primarily for smaller businesses. This is because they are unlikely to be able to muster the effort or spare the expense of negotiating a labour agreement directly with the Department of Home Affairs for a small number of nominations. With DAMAs this is done for them by their local region or state or territory.

The new DAMA is likely to alleviate skill shortages in the territory particularly when Australia’s unemployment is at historically low levels.