Australia: More Migrants Needed

Australia’s economy cannot continue to grow without a lot more skilled migrant workers, Immigration Minister Chris Evans said. In a report from The Age, Senator Evans has warned of an ageing Australian population and a range of industries that may not find enough skilled workers to enable their businesses to grow.

“So there is a huge demand. We will meet it by upskilling our own people, but we have got to make sure we have got strong skilled migration as well if we are going to grow,” the senator said. “We will be investing an awful lot in the education revolution and skilling our own people. But the reality is we have an ageing population. Unless we have migration we are not going to be able to grow our workforce.”

Under a proposed revised immigration program, Australia will substantially increase its intake of migrants, particularly those with necessary skills. That includes 190,300 in the permanent migration stream, 56,500 in the family stream and about 50,000 in the temporary skilled migration program, giving a total of more than 300,000. This would be the biggest yearly increase since the launch of the immigration program in the 1940s.

Senator Evans said for the first time last year the Australian workforce grew more from imported labour than from Australians taking new jobs. “We have got to have skilled migration to grow the economy. At the moment there is a real constraint on our capacity to grow because we just don’t have enough workers,” he said.

Senator Evans said there were significant skilled vacancies in the growth states, and there was a challenge to better connect those coming into Australia with areas where there were jobs. “We don’t want them all flocking into Sydney,” he said. “We actually want them going to Queensland, Western Australian and South Australia where there is huge demand for skills that they can’t find elsewhere.”