There are plenty of ideas on the table for next month's Jobs Summit, but there is one outcome that seems all but locked in.
Australia's permanent migration intake is going to change, likely both in size and shape.
It will grow from 160,000 people a year to possibly as high as 200,000 people a year.
There has been a remarkable consensus formed around that 200,000 figure, including both unions and business groups.
Plenty have argued the rise would provide an economic boost and help fill labour shortages.
But there is more to permanent migration than the headline figure.
Both business groups and unions have said change was needed around who the migration program brought in.
And some argued there were easy tweaks that could make an enormous difference.
Push for bigger, better migration program
From a low point in the late 1990s, Australia's permanent migration program grew fairly steadily to eventually hover around 190,000 people a year in the mid-2010s — right where the migration cap was set.
It then dipped, for a few reasons.
The number of visas being granted started falling short of the migration cap until the cap was eventually slashed under the Morrison government to 160,000 places in 2019-20.
That year also coincided with the onset of COVID-19, which saw even fewer visas granted.
The cap is still sitting where the Morrison government left it, at 160,000, but consensus has been building for change.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said it wanted a two-year lift to the cap up to 200,000 places.
CEO Andrew McKellar argued workforce shortages were hammering the economy and migration was part of the answer.
"We think there needs to be a sustainable but ambitious migration program," he said.
"Frankly, getting more skilled migrants into Australia is going to be good for the Australian economy, good for jobs and demand for the future.
"This is something that we really need to encourage."
Unions on board, with a catch (or 17)
Interesting, that was the same figure the ACTU put forward, a point of agreement from two groups often seen at opposing ends of the ideological spectrum.
The ACTU's support for a lift to 200,000 permanent migrants a year is, however, heavily conditional.
It had 17 conditions, including more effort to identify and prove genuine skills shortages, more investment heavily in skills and training, a rise in minimum wages for temporary migrants and a 50 per cent subsidy for new apprentices.
ACTU president Michele O'Neil said a rise in migration had to come with a rise in real wages for Australian workers.
"It should not happen unless we deliver the changes in our economy that will have wages growing for workers here," she said.
"It should only happen if we have a system that will stamp out exploitation of visa workers and move us back to a permanent migration system.
"And it should only happen if we invest in skills and training for workers here in Australia."
It's not the size, it's how you use it
There has also been a strong push to look beyond the raw numbers and into the intake itself.
Ordinarily, the permanent migration intake has been roughly two-thirds skilled migrants and one-third family members of citizens or permanent migrants.
Employer-sponsored visas, regional visas, global talent visas and skilled independent visas have all been part of the skilled portion of the equation.
The federal government's "issues paper", released ahead of the summit, laid out the case for dramatically simplifying what had often been a complex and clunky visa system.
It noted over 70 unique visa programs (including both temporary and permanent visas), each with different criteria and further subcategories.
The (sometimes controversial) occupation list included what skills potential migrants needed to demonstrate in order to secure certain visas.
Brendan Coates from the Grattan Institute suggests there is a case for a complete overhaul.
He argues that using permanent migration to address short-term skills shortages makes little sense.
"We maximise the contribution that migrants make to the Australian economy, and to the federal government budget, when we bring in young, skilled people regardless of their occupation," he said.
"We shouldn't be targeting permanent visas that allow people to stay here forever, on occupations which might only be in shortage for one or two years.
"We should be targeting high wages as the best measure of someone's skills — it's a better measure than anything else that we have."
He has advocated for scrapping the occupation list altogether and using potential earnings as a measure instead.
And he argued there was another, simpler change that would potentially add billions to the budget.
Mr Coates wanted to see "Business Innovation and Investment" visas abolished and those places moved into other skilled migration streams.
Last year, more than 11,000 visas were handed out, making up 14 per cent of the overall permanent migration intake.
The visas targeted "entrepreneurs, investors and business owners", aiming to lure them to bring their businesses to Australia.
But Mr Coates said despite those ambitions, the visa was not bringing in the people it was targeting.
"They do tend to be older, not have the skills that you're actually wanting because they only typically have high school diplomas, and they tend to not speak very good English," he said.
"You're replacing them with younger skilled workers with higher education degrees, master's degrees, who are going to do a lot better in Australia."
The Grattan Institute estimated the change would add $3 billion a year in fiscal dividend to the budget.
Tech sector wants faster processing
There have also been some who wanted attention to be focused on addressing the immediate, short-term skills shortages holding back parts of the economy.
The Tech Council of Australia said demand for software engineers, data scientists, computer network managers and other highly-skilled roles had grown at twice the pace of other roles for nearly a decade.
That rapid growth has led to enormous demand being met by not nearly enough supply.
Tech Council CEO Kate Pounder said plenty of attention had been paid to the overall size of the migration program but the biggest change they wanted to see was simply visas being processed faster.
"The biggest issue for our sector is processing time, it's not the absolute cap," she said.
"Times have blown out in some cases to six months, nine months.
"So for us, the priority is actually processing those high-skill, high-wage, low-risk roles more speedily, because that would help us address skills shortages in the short term."
She said the impact of that skills shortage — particularly those with significant industry experience — flowed on throughout the economy and prevented even more people from being hired domestically.
