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Australia must shift away from “permanently temporary” migration, and seize the opportunity provided by skilled people already here and abroad, the home affairs minister says.
Clare O’Neil has called for an overhaul of Australia’s migrant system, making it easier for skilled migrants to arrive to plug worker shortfalls, and for talented international students to remain in the country for the long term.
But in a speech to the Australian Financial Review’s workforce summit on Wednesday, Ms O’Neil warned fixing Australia’s migration system was a “five-year project”, saying Labor was working with “broken pipes” left behind by the Coalition.
She compared Australia’s position in the global talent race to “turning up to the starter’s blocks … with lead weights tied around your ankles”, with its migration system too complex and stringent.
“[It] is broken. It is [not] strategic. It is complex, expensive, and slow. It is not delivering for business, for migrants, or for our population,” she said.
How reliant is Australia on temporary workers?
Ms O’Neil described a reliance on temporary work as a “huge missed opportunity” for business.
She criticised the rapid expansion in temporary migration under the former Coalition government, while the intake of skilled permanent migration remained relatively stagnant.
She claimed the “staggering change in direction” towards temporary migration came with significant social and economic costs, but had occurred through “negligence” rather than proper policy debate.
The number of temporary migrants in Australia – excluding visitor and transit visas – had jumped from around one million in 2007, when Labor was last in power, to 1.9 million today. That’s despite Australia’s skilled migrant intake remaining roughly the same, at 30,000 annually, she said.
“It is now relatively easy for a low-skill, temporary migrant to come to Australia, but difficult, slow and not particularly attractive for a high-skill, permanent migrant to come here. We’ve got the system backwards,” she said.
So who is the government focusing on?
Ms O’Neil described international students as “big untapped dividends”, but warned many were “effectively forced to leave” after graduating.
Around 40 per cent of those who remained ended up working in lower-skilled jobs than they were qualified for, partly because Australia lacked a system for integrating them into the broader workforce, she said.
She referenced Brian Schmidt, a Nobel Prize-winning US physicist who migrated in 1994 before going on to become ANU vice-chancellor.
Brian’s visa was processed in four days. Today’s brilliant young astrophysicist, depending on the visa category, might have to wait for a year and pay thousands of dollars upfront … What a loss [he] would have been for Australia,” Ms O’Neil said.
Speeding up recognition of overseas qualifications is also on the agenda.
Ms O’Neil said despite a “desperate shortage” of nurses across the country, the visa system meant qualified foreigners can have to pay up to $20,000 and wait 35 months to have those qualifications recognised.
“At the moment, it simply makes Australia an unattractive destination for the workers we really want and need,” she said.
What impact does temporary migration have?
Ms O’Neil said Labor is looking to end policies that create “permanently temporary” conditions.
Those conditions left migrants unable to set roots in Australia, unable to invest in their education or get a loan to start a business.
“Instead, many are on a Kafka-esque journey, perpetually filling in forms and cycling through different kinds of temporary visas. Not good for them, not good for the country,” she said.
What’s the context?
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated shortages in a number of areas, from the health and aged care sectors to regional farm work.
Both the Coalition and Labor described the situation in the aged care sector as a “crisis” in the last term of government.
Before the May 2022 election, Labor promised to have a qualified nurse in every Australian aged care home 24/7 within 12 months of taking office. Ms O’Neil conceded at the time that the pledge meant it would have “just over a year to find the additional nurses that we will need”.
At Labor’s jobs summit last September, employers and business representatives called for a larger permanent program, complaining that onerous visa requirements meant they were losing talent to other countries.
The government has also commissioned a wide-scale review of Australia’s migration system, set to be released later this year. It will look into the “ideal size and composition” of permanent migration, and assess what policy changes would make Australia more attractive to skilled foreigners.
