Gary Elphick, co-founder of customised sports equipment manufacturer Disrupt, is disillusioned after his business partner was deported. Credit:Cole Bennetts As a start-up, Elphick says Disrupt is not recognised as a "business" under the Migration Act for the purpose of sponsoring skilled individuals on temporary work visas. Before travelling to Australia and co-founding Disrupt in 2014, Mr Bailey had been the founding operations head of Student City Travel, which expanded to be Europe's largest platform for youth sports travel before a trade sale to Tui Travel. "He could have taken a lot of time off. He was offered executive level corporate and consulting jobs. However, I was fortunate enough that he shared [my] vision and passion for Disrupt. He was willing to forego a salary, work 12-hour days and ride the rollercoaster once again," Mr Elphick said in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday. Smoothed the way Ironically, one of those corporate jobs would have smoothed the way to a four-year work visa, rather than a holiday visa, which must be extended every six months and comes with regional work obligations attached.

"We knew he was taking a risk in pretending to have done the harvest work, but what choice did he have? Three months is like three years in start-up land. He'd have missed all the huge strides we've been making and I would have had to find somebody else," Mr Elphick said. The entrepreneur, who with Mr Bailey employed eight people in Disrupt's Sydney office, has cut short his planned working holiday in the US for the "miserable" task of replacing his co-founder as shareholder and overseer of the start-up's global logistics and supply chain. "I've had one conversation with Chris and we know it's not a sustainable situation," Mr Elphick said. To regain momentum, Mr Elphick wants to return to the US and build that market as soon as possible. However, it's unlikely Mr Bailey would be allowed into the US now that he has an immigration "record". The fact that three months of picking bananas was deemed more valuable to the Australian economy than three months working at a high-growth start-up "makes a mockery" of the Turnbull government's "ideas boom" rhetoric, Mr Elphick said. "While I have my own pain, I'm more concerned about the long-term negative impact immigration has and will have on the Australian tech scene, with other companies facing similar challenges. How can they bring in highly skilled individuals from countries with more developed tech ecosystems to work in Australian start-ups?"

Not just tech industry It was not just the technology industry that was harmed by the stringent working holiday requirements, Mr Elphick said. "I did my stint on a farm eight years ago and the bloke picking capsicums next to me was a doctor. How did Australia benefit from having him there when he could have been helping out in a hospital?" Ironically, Mr Elphick and Mr Bailey had been start-up mentors at the University of NSW, where the Australian Border Force had asked their advice on criteria for the Entrepreneur Visas promised for November 2016. "As friendly as the people who ran the panel were, we both walked away shaking our heads, as they had absolutely no idea," Mr Elphick said.

"The requirements put forward – must be a single founder, based overseas, and have already raised $500,000 funding – were just crazy. "I can't think of a single example that fit the bill, and how does this even promote internal innovation?" Mr Elphick said he still hoped the government would implement his advice for a visa bringing in skills beyond fundraising ability, even if for Disrupt, which sold 1500 customised surfboards in Australia in 2015, it will be too late. A "gutted" Mr Elphick said he would consider shifting Disrupt's headquarters to the US. Comment was being sought from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.