Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question's for the Treasurer. One-third of all occupations in Australia are in shortage, yet Australia has 253,000 permanent migrants, already here, that are working below their skill level. This includes 20,000 teachers, 50,000 engineers, 16,000 nurses and 1,300 electricians, all unable to teach, care and build to their full capacity because of slow and costly skills-recognition pathways. What concrete steps will the government take to ensure that skills recognition of migrants is faster, fairer and more affordable?

An honourable member: Great question!

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great question, and it reflects the concerns of a number of our colleagues who raise these issues with me from time to time, and I see it in my own community. I see this as a very important economic issue, but also a social issue—a social justice issue: making sure that, when people come to our country, they can participate fully, whether it be in the labour market or in other ways.

As the member well knows, as a participant at the Economic Reform Roundtable last year, this is a core part of the productivity puzzle as well, and it's an essential part of delivering the single national market for workers that we talked about in that forum and have been working hard to implement. In fact, the very first piece of legislation introduced into this parliament, under this Prime Minister, was to create Jobs and Skills Australia, and, in that legislation and in the amendments, we strengthened JSA's role in the migration system and in skills recognition as well. JSA released a significant study last year as well, working out the best way for education, migration and employment systems to work together to recognise the very important contribution that migrants make to our labour market and to our country more broadly.

We've also provided funding to streamline skills assessment for migrants. That has benefited more than 13,000 applicants, particularly in the construction occupations. And we've given the Minister for Skills and Training new powers to help improve the quality and timeliness of our skills assessment system, to help make the system fairer and more efficient.

Having said all of that, we know that there is more work to do in this regard, and that's why, last November, I agreed with my state and territory counterparts to prioritise work on recognising skills—particularly in areas of acute demand like construction, health and emerging industries—and we have a number of ways that we're going about this important work. I've also had a number of discussions with probably half a dozen of the colleagues over here in recent weeks, some of them in recent days. I shout out the important work of the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, the Minister for Skills and Training, the Minister for Home Affairs, the Minister for Multicultural Affairs, the Minister for Housing and other colleagues as well.

We also look forward to the insights that Martin Parkinson and Violet Roumeliotis will be sharing tomorrow at the Press Club, warming up the crowd for the Prime Minister's appearance at the National Press Club on Thursday. I look forward to hearing what Martin and Violet have to say on these really important issues, and to working very hard on next steps.