Australia Lifts Permanent Immigration

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As the country struggles with a labor and talent deficit, the Australian government stated it would boost its permanent immigration intake by 35,000 to 195,000 in the current fiscal year. During a two-day summit of 140 leaders of governments, trade unions, enterprises, and industry to address skills shortages exacerbated by the pandemic, Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil announced the hike for the year ending June 30, 2023.

According to O'Neill, planes are being postponed due to a lack of ground staff, Australian nurses have been working double and triple shifts for the past two years, and fruit is being left to decay on branches because no one can pick it.“Our focus is always Australian jobs first, and that’s why so much of the summit has focused on training and the participation of women and other marginalized groups,” O’Neil said. “But the impact of COVID has been so severe that even if we exhaust every other possibility, we will still be many thousands of workers short, at least in the short term,” she added. According to O'Neil, many of the "best and brightest minds," are migrating to Canada, Germany, and Britain rather than Australia. She called Australia's immigration policy, which includes more than 70 distinct visa categories, "fiendishly complex." According to her, Australia will create a committee to revamp its immigration policy for the country's benefit.

On the opening day of the Jobs and Skills Summit, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared that 180,000 free places in vocational education institutions will be made available in 2019 for 1.1 billion Australian dollars ($748 million) to address the skills gap in the country. Early in the pandemic, Australia placed some of the strictest travel restrictions of any democratic nation for 20 months before gradually reopening to skilled workers in December of last year.