Experts say migration solutions are key to upcoming jobs and skills summit

Calls for an overhaul of Australia's complex migration are being pushed to try and alleviate current skill and labour shortages dragging on the economy.

Migration to Australia dropped off during the pandemic due to border closures and has caused significant skills and labour shortages across the economy.

Some believe migration caps desperately need to be increased to fill the gaps, while others are pushing for migration visas to create clearer and simpler pathways to permanent residency and citizenship.

Speculation is also mounting whether real reforms will be generated from Treasurer Jim Chalmers' summit if economic problems will be left in the too hard basket.

Australian National University demographer Liz Allen says Labor's summit seems to be in good faith, however remains sceptical proper reforms will be implemented.

"I'm not terribly keen on summits," Dr Allen told ACM.

"They tend to be historically massive talkfests and they don't generally achieve much other than a very large document."

Dr Allen said migration needed to be addressed at the summit and was one of the main, short-term solutions in fixing the "perfect storm" of issues facing the economy.

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"Without immigration, Australia would not meet the needs of the local workforce, because the local population is insufficient," she said.

"The demand (for labour) is far greater than what we have available by the way of people.

"Successive governments have let it get to the point of crisis."

Australia's unemployment rate is currently sitting at 3.4 per cent and reflects a lack of workers within the labour market. For the July figures, there were more job vacancies than people unemployed.

Australian Council of Trade Unions president Michele O'Neil believes changes to the migration visa system are needed to stamp out exploitation among overseas workers.

"We had a senate report just in March this year that said we had systemic, sustained and shameful exploitation of migrant workers in Australia," Ms O'Neil said. "We're proposing that there needs to be a range of things that break that nexus so that we have workers treated properly when they come to Australia."

She also noted better pathways to citizenship need to be more evident for workers looking to relocate overseas.

The ACTU, in its report ahead of the summit, is urging the government to remove single employer visa sponsorship and should be moved to a more industry model.

"We think that an employer controlling both your pay check and and your passport is a recipe for exploitation," Ms O'Neil said. "That combined power of whether you get to stay in the country as well as your pay conditions of [your] job is too much power to vest in any employer."

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry hit back at the proposals made by the ACTU and believe the model would not be fit for purpose and that businesses are better at responding and identifying the need for migrant workers.

"How does that work? What's the mechanism for that? We're not a centrally-planned economy," ACCI chief executive Andrew McKellar said. "These are people running businesses, knowing how many people they want to employ and then they're in the marketplace trying to source that labour. The boundary shouldn't stop at the Australian border."

ACCI is calling on the federal government to lift the annual migration cap to around 200,000 to make up for the loss in migration over the pandemic.

Mr McKellar believes Australia has become less competitive as an importer of skilled migrants due to a perception of the country not being welcoming and isolationist.

"The way we close borders and the way we dealt with visa holders during the pandemic did damage to brand Australia, and we've got to do all we can to turn that around," he said. "We need to remove a lot of the complexity and cost that people are facing at the moment which is just delaying the whole process."

Dr Allen from ANU also agreed brand Australia was tarnished during the pandemic and believes the country needs to stop perceiving migrant workers as stealing local people's jobs.

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