Australia faces a series of crises, but immigration is not a catch-all solution

If there’s one takeaway from the jobs and skills summit, it’s that Australia is facing a series of crises, from housing to food security, climate to education. As a solution to a range of issues, Australia’s permanent migration cap will increase from 160,000 to 195,000, the government announced this morning at the summit, with a major review of the migration program to take place. 

Like gender, immigration scored a mention in almost every panel and dominated the discussion on day two of the summit, touted as a solution for workforce shortages in aged care, tech, clean energy, hospitality, agriculture and tourism.

While immigration is a solution for a wide range of issues, it’s messily entangled with a series of other crises, from housing to human rights. 

Australia’s housing crisis has caused a surge in homelessness, especially in regional areas. As Bernard Keane pointed out yesterday, increasing migration will result in a rush to build homes for newly arrived workers, which will benefit property developers and boomer asset owners. 

In his concluding address at the summit, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced $575 million would be released for the national housing infrastructure facility for social and affordable housing and to attract private capital.

But construction hasn’t caught up from COVID-19 backlogs, with those impacted by floods and fires still waiting for permanent solutions — thanks to building supply and labour shortages.

Employee numbers could be bumped up by encouraging women into the workforce. Electrical Trades Union secretary Michael Wright told the summit women comprised “barely 2%” of the industry. But he also said the working conditions for women “would have made the 1950s gasp”, thanks to things like unequal pay, with some workplaces having no bathrooms for women. 

Not only is abuse, discrimination and harassment of women an issue in the sector, but it’s also not appealing for men either: construction workers are six times more likely to die by suicide than in workplace accidents, with independent ACT Senator David Pocock warning that one construction worker is lost to suicide every day in Australia. A tripartite national construction forum has been announced following summit discussions to deal with mental health and safety, culture, productivity and gender in the industry. 

New homes will need to be powered with renewable energy, in line with the Albanese government’s promise to deliver 82% renewable energy by 2030. Smart Energy Council chief executive John Grimes told the summit the energy transition will happen 10 times faster than the Industrial Revolution, and also highlighted gaps in the workforce, from electricians to trade assistants, battery design specialists, wind turbine technicians and electrical engineers.

But clean energy is fast becoming a competitive industry as the world transitions, meaning Australia will have to offer good deals to convince people to leave their homes. 

If offered permanent visas, who will look after these new migrants in their old age? Professor Sue Gordon of the Flinders Caring Futures Institute warned that the aged care sector lost 30% of its workforce in 2021, with another 40% indicating they’d leave in the next three years.

Australia needs nurses and workers to look after our aging population. This issue isn’t unique here either, especially following the pandemic, with the global shortage of nurses doubling to around 13 million. Recruiting a workforce from abroad raises plenty of ethical questions. 

Food security is the next crisis on the table, with Nationals Leader David Littleproud warning that workers are needed to avert a food crisis, with farms running at 50-60% capacity thanks to worker shortages. But since the coming to light of the “slave-like” conditions seasonal farm workers have been subjected to, there’s a lot of work to make sure those in the sector are supported and safe. 

Since 2015 Australia has been subject to a major labour trafficking scam, immigration policy expert Abul Rizvi told the summit, with “millions of appallingly exploited migrant workers”. 

Even if issues around housing, climate, the care sector and food security could simply be solved by upping immigration, it ignores a key question: do workers even want to come here? 

As independent MP Zali Steggall pointed out, engineers are working as Uber drivers because their qualifications aren’t recognised, while Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said migrants had been opting for Germany and Canada where a “red carpet” had been rolled out for them.

“The [skilled and permanent migrant] system is expensive, it is bureaucratic, it takes an eternity to get anything done,” she said. “Australia is in a global war for talent.”

With no end in sight for issues around housing, human rights, competition and the care economy, there’s a lot more to be done before the increase in migration numbers can be celebrated as a solution.