Subclass 400 Rapid Mobilisation
The Subclass 400 Temporary Work (Short Stay Specialist) visa lets an Australian employer bring an overseas specialist on site for highly skilled, non-ongoing work of up to three months, with no sponsorship, nomination or training obligation attached. Resource Visa prepares these applications for Australian employers — decision-ready, properly evidenced, and lodged within 48 hours of a complete file. We act for the employer — the company putting a specialist on site — never for the individual applicant.
Decision-ready 400 applications, lodged against your date
What the Subclass 400 covers
- Stays of up to three months, tied to a defined piece of work
- No sponsorship, nomination or training obligation
- Built for dated events — shutdowns, breakdowns, commissioning windows
- No formal Labour Market Testing requirement, though justification is essential
- Can be lodged offshore or, in limited circumstances, onshore
- Suits a single specialist or a full crew
Who it's for
Employers needing short-term access to highly specialised skills not readily available in the Australian labour market. Typically:
- Offshore construction and marine engineering specialists
- Shutdown technicians and commissioning teams
- Subsea welders, riggers, cable layers and marine crew
- QA/QC experts, site inspectors and specialist consultants
- Renewable energy contractors and turbine technicians
- Equipment installers and systems integrators on major builds
Typical use cases in the resource sector
- Deploying a shutdown crew for a three-week plant outage
- Bringing in a commissioning engineer for an offshore facility
- Mobilising a subsea cable installation team
- Supporting project ramp-up with urgent overseas skills
- Flying in a turbine technician for a regional install
- Bridging a skills gap during a critical build phase
Visa conditions and requirements
- The work must be short-term and highly specialised
- The role must be non-ongoing and project-specific
- No Labour Market Testing is required, but justification is essential
- No employer nomination or formal sponsorship is needed
What changed in September 2024
Since September 2024, cumulative stay is scrutinised beyond three months in any twelve-month period, and repeat applications attract closer review.
In practice this means the bar has moved on evidence, not on eligibility. Every application now needs to demonstrate — with documents, not assertions — that the work is genuinely specialised and genuinely short-term. Applications that read as a convenient route around sponsorship are the ones that attract scrutiny.
If your specialist has been to Australia on a 400 within the last twelve months, tell us on the first call. It changes how the case has to be built.
How Resource Visa builds the application
Every 400 application is built around a commercial business case: the role and the dated event; why the skill is specialised; why the role is non-ongoing; what local sourcing was attempted; and — the section almost nobody else writes — the quantified commercial impact. Cost of the outage per day. Contract penalties at stake. Production consequences of delay.
Assembled, reviewed and lodged personally by our principal — Registered Migration Agent, dual-qualified CPA and CIMA, former group CFO.
We provide:
- Same-day triage and an honest read on whether the 400 is the right instrument
- One consolidated document request within 24 hours — a single list, not a drip-feed
- Business case assembled, reviewed by you, and lodged within 48 hours of a complete file
- One point of control — the employer engages us, the specialist appoints us, and both sides of the file run from one desk
- Preferred-supplier arrangements and an annual mobilisation retainer for OEM service divisions and shutdown contractors that mobilise year-round
Engagements are fixed-fee, scoped in writing before we start, and quoted at the 20-minute briefing once we understand the work.
When the 400 is the wrong instrument
If the role looks ongoing, we will tell you — and map the Subclass 482 pathway instead.
The 400 is for work with an end date built into it. If the honest description of the role is “we need this person for the foreseeable future”, it isn’t a 400 matter, however inconvenient that is. Stretching a 400 past its honest case is how companies end up with a refusal on their record, and a refusal is visible to the Department in every subsequent application by that company and that worker.
Two other situations where it isn’t the right instrument: where the work isn’t genuinely specialised and an Australian could reasonably do it, and where the specialist has already accumulated close to three months in Australia in the last twelve.
Who you are dealing with
Migration advice with a CFO's signature
Resource Visa is led by Matthew Coleman, a Registered Migration Agent who spent two decades in senior finance roles across the resources sector before practising migration. The commercial context behind a mobilisation is not something that has to be explained.
- Registered Migration Agent, MARN 1686595
- CPA (Australia) and CIMA (UK), dual-qualified
- 20+ years in corporate finance, including group CFO roles
- Mining, oil and gas, energy infrastructure and marine services
- Principal-led. You deal with the person doing the work.
Frequently asked questions
Resource Visa lodges within 48 hours of receiving a complete file. Triage happens the same business day you call, and a single consolidated document request follows within 24 hours. The variable nobody controls is how quickly your documents reach us — which is why we ask for everything once, on day one. Departmental processing time after lodgement is set by the Department, not by any adviser.
No. The Subclass 400 carries no sponsorship, nomination or training obligation. That is the main practical difference between it and the Subclass 482, and it is why the 400 can move so much faster.
Up to three months, tied to the defined piece of work. Since September 2024 the Department scrutinises cumulative stay beyond three months in any twelve-month period, so a specialist who has recently been in Australia on a 400 needs the case built differently.
No formal Labour Market Testing is required. Justification still is. The application must demonstrate why the skill is specialised and why it was not readily available in the Australian labour market, which in practice means evidence of what local sourcing was attempted.
It depends on where the facility sits and what it is doing. Work in an offshore resources activity in Australian waters is treated differently under the Migration Act, and the answer changes with the location and the nature of the activity. This is one of the most commonly misunderstood areas in resources mobilisation — see our page on offshore and FPSO visa requirements.
Yes, and it is extremely common on shutdowns. It does change how the application is framed, because the relationship between the worker, the contractor and the site operator has to be set out clearly and consistently. Getting this wrong is a frequent cause of requests for further information.
Tell us as soon as you know. Depending on where the application sits and how far the date moves, the answer ranges from no action to withdrawing and relodging. A moved date handled early is an administrative matter; a moved date discovered late can undermine the business case the application was built on.
Engagements are fixed-fee and scoped in writing before we start. We quote at the 20-minute briefing, once we understand the work. We do not quote before we understand the scope, because the honest answer depends on whether it’s one specialist or a crew of fourteen.
Related pages
The roles we mobilise
The specialist trades and engineering roles we move into Australian resources projects — rope access, subsea, NDT, rotating…
Subclass 400 vs 482: which visa for a defined scope of work?
The difference between the Subclass 400 and the Subclass 482 for Australian employers — sponsorship, duration, obligations,…
Why Subclass 400 applications get refused
The reasons Subclass 400 applications fail — and why a refusal follows both the company and the worker into every future…
Book a 20-minute mobilisation briefing
Twenty minutes. No obligation. Direct with our principal. Tell us the role, the site and the date.
Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm AWST