DESPITE the criticisms from federal opposition leader Peter Dutton, the Albanese government's Jobs and Skills Summit has made some significant breakthroughs in the name of helping both the working lives of everyday Australians, and the national economy.
The workforce shortage is real, and exacerbated by the impacts of COVID. Immigration had stopped, effectively, for more than two years, and many existing visa holders had to leave, a net loss, the summit heard, of more than 300,000 working people.
Lifting the permanent skilled immigration cap by 35,000, and hiring 500 extra staff to handle the surge in visa processing, will help, and quickly.
The COVID driven loss of workers has driven unemployment to low levels but also created significant shortages in crucial places, including hospitals and nursing homes, and led to serious supply chain disruptions in key sectors of the economy.
Enterprises wanting to rebuild now that restrictions have been lifted are being held back because they can't fill vacancies.
That said, a short-term increase in permanent skilled migration is not a long-term panacea for the nation's economic ills. We need a conversation about Australia's "carrying capacity" and the demands that higher migration puts on our infrastructure, including housing.
Many of our best workers are already here and so yesterday's summit sessions looked at the importance of a more inclusive, integrated and well-trained workforce, and ways to make it easier for women, older people and those living with disability to find secure and well-paid work.
To that end, anything that provides more job security for those in the increasingly casualised sectors is to be welcomed. The relaxing of earning rules for pensioners falls into that category.
Education - and not just for the young - is central to boosting workforce participation, and the summit heard that more than half of our unemployed had either left school before Year 12 or done no subsequent training after school.
The skills shortage is not only a crisis that needs to be resolved, it's an opportunity we need to embrace to modernise and improve our workplace relations.
Much has changed since the Hawke/Keating Labor era opened with the 1983 jobs summit, but the centrality of paid work in a democracy, and the role of government in overseeing the efficient and fair use of labour, remain the same.
This week's summit has made concrete progress, but just as importantly reset a crucial national conversation.
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