pohlcatt1,
If it's not on skills in demand list, it won't qualify for independent residence/migration visa. End of story. I don't expect Australians to know all the details about visas for foreigners to OZ since it doesn't bother them.
if that school is in 'regional' Australia, advertises in local papers or whatever the procedure is without any result and shows losses due to shortage, yeah, they can go forth and sponsor someone with the right qualification.
But then, it's specific employer-sponsored work permit for 2 years or so (no idea how long it would/could be) and the potential instructor has to meet CASA requirements AND have CASA CPL+FI.
So we're looking into couple month's of delays depending on paperwork speed (usually 2-3x longer if person abroad) on DIMA side, plus doing the qualifications etc.
One way would be to advertise for 'students' from abroad to come on student visa (if school got CRICOS no, ie authorised to accept international students) and have their training sponsored by school (partly or wholly).
That way the person can legally instruct 20 hours a week (well, lots of people do more hours in bars in OZ, not sure if it'll be OK for FTO) while doing the CASA CPL/FI.
Recently, OZ started so-called graduate work permits (a la NZ style). If I remember, there's some minimum time on student visa required to be eligible, so may not be suitable for someone doing few months of training. They can always feign more 'full-time training' towards some ratings and still instruct part-time..
Then, if the school has still serious FI shortages, they are in good position to sponsor someone who is onshore with all the ratings, paperwork faster.
The problem is, if they don't have enough instructors for PPL and CPL instructing, would they have spare instructor's time for soon-to-be instructor? Also, not to mention all the hassle/time and minimum hours to instruct in OZ. Possible, not likely.
I visited Bristow Academy's website (heli school) recently and in their 'success stories' there are few Scandinavians who trained with BA in Florida and after coming back to Europe, they were offered jobs with Bristow Group doing offshore support in shiny choppers in Australia. Since it's 'Asian and Pacific operations' of big global company, doing 'intra-company transfer' visa wasn't that hard obviously.
Not likely to happen with some small and/or independent FTO in Australia..
I can make up some time-consuming ways to work the rules, but it won't change the way it's most likely to happen/end up not being realised.
EDIT:
Unless it's a lifestyle choice to go to OZ, I don't see that many JAA/FAA FIs actually going through this hassle when they can easily get instructing job back home. They may even fly more multi hours than they would in OZ. Also, if they are around 400TT, they're likely to have a job already anyway..