Key Points
- Government will raise its migration cap to 195,000 a year, adding 35,000 spots from the previous cap of 160,000.
- Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said the government will also commit $36.1 million to clear visa backlogs
Home Affairs minister Clare O'Neil says the Australian government will raise its cap to 195,000 a year, adding 35,000 spots from the previous cap of 160,000.
Ms O'Neil's announcement matched Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's comments earlier on Friday morning that there was a "consensus" for a need for more permanent migration to address labour shortages.
"I want to emphasise that one of Labor’s priorities is to move away from the focus on short-term migrants, toward permanency, citizenship and nation building," Ms O'Neil said on day two of the Jobs and Skills Summit.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said Australia has got some issues with community cohesion at the moment. Source: AAP / MICK TSIKAS
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said the government will commit $36.1 million to clear visa backlogs
"We will invest 36.1 million dollars in visa processing, to surge staff capacity by 500 people for the next nine months," Mr Giles said.
"In addition to clearing the backlog, this will help deliver the permanent migration program."
Mr Albanese told ABC's News Breakfast that Australia's workforce had become too "vulnerable" by its reliance on temporary migration, which he said was made clear during the pandemic.
"There is a consensus that there is a need for an increase [in migration intakes], and also a consensus that it is not just about the numbers but about the make-up of our migration system, that we need to move towards more permanent migration rather than a reliance on temporary labour," Mr Albanese said.
"What that did was set us up and make us more vulnerable so that when the borders shut, all of a sudden there was an over-reliance on temporary labour which meant that we could not fill the skills that were needed in this country."
The role of migration and training in fixing the skills and labour shortage crisis will be a key discussion point at the Jobs and Skills Summit.
Over 140 representatives will gather for the second and final day of the summit at Parliament House in Canberra on Friday.
Mr Albanese will wrap up proceedings on Friday afternoon after using the first day to announce an additional 180,000 fee-free TAFE places by 2023 as part of a major training package.
Mr Albanese also flagged further announcements for Friday.
"There's a range of measures that we're seeing come to an agreement," he told the ABC on Thursday evening.
"I'm very confident that (Friday), we'll have positive announcements, not just in skills and training, but in migration."
LISTEN TO
PM says migration is part of the solution to address national skills shortage
SBS News
22/08/202203:33
Mr Albanese says the main takeaway of the summit needs to be job security.
"More people are in insecure work than ever before. People are working two jobs just to get by, wages aren't keeping up with the cost of living," he told a summit dinner.
"People don't have the security you need from a permanent job or secure income in order to pay a mortgage or reliably plan a family.
"I want people to have security."
One of the achievements of the talks in the lead-up to the summit, and the meeting itself, has been getting a consensus around reducing reliance on temporary migration, the prime minister said.
"There are people here who've been on temporary visas for year after year after year and it keeps getting extended without giving them the certainty that enables them to buy a house and send their kids to school and to have that security," he said.
"We need to do better."
The sentiment was echoed by economist Ross Garnaut, who said skilled immigration is more likely to boost real wages.
"It's much more likely to raise rather than lower average real wages the more it's focused on the permanent migration of people with genuinely scarce and valuable skills that are bottlenecks to valuable Australian production, and which cannot be provided by training Australians," he said.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers ruled out bringing forward the government's signature childcare policy from mid-2023 to get women into the workforce sooner, after gender equality in the workforce was highlighted on the first day.
"We wanted to make sure that one of the big focuses of this Jobs Summit was the untapped economic potential of Australian women who would work more and earn more if we made it easier for them to do that," he told the Ten's The Project.
"We would like to be able to fund some of these ideas earlier than we are but the reality is we can't afford to ... and so instead, it will begin in July as we originally intended."
Nationals leader David Littleproud wants the government to be better at hearing the voices of rural and regional women, saying the summit had become more about union grandstanding.
"One of the most disappointing things I saw was the session on women and the disrespect this government showed to 30 per cent of the women in this country," he told AAP.
"There was not one woman from regional Australia on that panel, and the challenges that regional women face in terms of childcare and getting into the workforce are different to metropolitan areas.
"I respect the fact they had someone that had engaged with Indigenous communities, but 30 per cent of women live in regional Australia and their voice wasn't heard."
