The federal government will rewrite Australia's immigration system, with almost every visa category up for change, and a promise to tighten rules for international students.
Among the changes will be an immediate lift to the minimum wage threshold for skilled workers, which has been frozen for a decade, and the establishment of a pathway to permanency for about 17,000 temporary workers.
A major review commissioned by the government found the system was "complex, inefficient and inflexible", proposing a wholesale rewrite of the web of visa classes, caveats, tests and other complications that has developed over the years.
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- Reforming Australia's overall immigration intake
- Lifting the skilled worker visa wage threshold
- Simplifying the system and cutting wait times
- Tightening rules for international students
Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil said the system was not up to the task to solve the greatest labour shortage Australia has faced since World War II.
Yet, despite that, the minister said Australia offered few incentives to fix those shortages.
"We ask an overseas-trained nurse to pay up to $20,000 and wait up to 35 months to get their qualifications recognised and their visa granted," the government's strategy outlined.
The government's plan will, in fact, slightly reduce the immigration intake over the medium term, with the fix for labour shortages to come from improving the quality of who is granted a visa.
Many of the finer details will be worked through in the weeks and months to come, and will be legislated in phases, but Ms O'Neil has outlined her thinking on her "urgent task" to overhaul immigration.
Here's a breakdown of some of the biggest changes.
A bigger Australia? Smaller? Government won't put a number on it
The federal government and the migration review have deliberately avoided putting a specific figure on how many immigrants should come to the country each year.
One of the problems with doing so, the reviewer and former treasury boss Dr Martin Parkinson argued, is that the debate around a "big" versus "small" Australia ends up consuming much of the oxygen on immigration reform, and often ignores the much larger number of temporary workers that come to the country.
However, the review does propose shifting from a hard limit to permanent migration each year in favour of measuring by net overseas migration, which would account for both permanent and temporary migration, and help shift Australia's economy from being so dependent on temporary workers, who are more exposed to exploitation.
It also suggests shifting migration targets from being annual decisions to being decided over 10-year stretches, which would also allow state governments to be more involved in planning to minimise population pressures on cities.
But, if all the recommendations of the review were implemented, it would result in a slightly smaller immigration intake over the medium term, and speaking at the National Press Club, Ms O'Neil said it was her "desire" that it was slightly tightened in the medium-term.
"I'm not someone who advocates for a big Australia in this conversation," Ms O'Neil told the National Press Club.
"What's really important to me is that we've got these big national problems facing our country and we're not getting the right people here through the migration system to help us address them."
The rules for in-demand visas are out of date
The government argues Australia's most important methods to bring necessary and skilled workers are mired in bureaucratic problems.
For example, the occupation codes used on the back-end of Australia's migration, tax and other systems have not been added to since 2013.
There are jobs in Australia today facing labour shortages that did not exist when the code was last updated.
The minister wants to do away with those "outdated, inflexible" lists, and instead give Jobs and Skills Australia the authority to determine what occupations are in need.
The minimum wage that can be offered to a skilled worker on an employer-sponsored visa also hasn't been lifted from its 2013 figure, after it was frozen by the Abbott government in 2014, and not indexed since then.
That means more than 90 per cent of full time workers in Australia are paid above its current threshold of $53,900, and employers are using the scheme to import workers who were never designed to be included, and paying them for less.
The federal government intends to raise that threshold to $70,000 from July.
Ms O'Neil said that lift was "a substantial increase to ensure we have skilled workers coming under a skilled program".
On top of that, the government says "the points test" for skilled visas, which helps determine which applicants are most desirable for improved productivity, is not useful and must be rewritten.
For example, the reviewers say 39-year-olds score double the average 40-year-old because of how a one-year age gap is calculated, and that maximum scores for most people on their English skills and qualifications mean visas are often decided on minor criteria, such as whether they studied in a regional area.
The points test has been identified by government as one of its first targets for reform that could quickly improve the quality of workers being given permanent visas.
Ms O'Neil told the National Press Club that administrative problems were "central" to Australia's immigration woes.
"I have sat with visa processors at the Home Affairs department and honestly, hats off to these people," Ms O'Neil said.
"They are working between four or five different computer programs, cutting and pasting things, retyping things — you will not believe the state of this IT, it is a real issue."
The system is complex and that has blown out immigration backlogs
Those administrative problems are also leaving employers struggling to fill other roles.
The federal government uses ex-Australian National University vice chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt, also a Nobel laureate, as an example.
When the American astrophysicist came to Australia in the late 90s, it took four days to process his working visa.
The wait for a foreign astrophysicist seeking to work in Australia today is about 180 days.
With more than 100 visa sub-classes for people to navigate, the government says the system must be simplified, making it easier and faster for people to be processed.
Those long waits are exacerbating labour shortages, but there are more issues for employers seeking to bring workers here.
Up-front costs for businesses are prohibitive and the review recommends the fees should be charged monthly instead, with workers allowed to leave their sponsored job and search for work for up to six months to make the system more flexible, and help cut down exploitation.
The federal government has also committed to establishing a pathway to permanency for people on temporary skill shortage visas, to prevent Australia from losing those in-demand workers because their visas have run out.
International students using study as pathway to permanency
Currently, one of the biggest groups of migrants to Australia is international students, and more than half of people granted permanent visas come from that cohort.
But most of those graduates also don't end up working in the industries they studied in, and because the wage threshold for someone to be eligible for a permanent "skilled" visa is set at $53,900, most graduates easily qualify even if they are not working in the in-demand jobs they studied for.
Ms O'Neil told the National Press Club the rules for who could come to study would be tightened, with more supports offered for graduates to help get into skilled work.
"We are assessing international students based on whether we think they will be able to essentially survive in Australia's education system; it is a low bar to set, appropriately, as they are here to learn," Ms O'Neil told the National Press Club.
"The issue is that this has become the dominant feeder into our permanent programs, [we have] a low bar and we have a broken test that converts someone from a temporary to a permanent migrant."
To support graduates, the federal government will consider granting "automatic" temporary graduate visas to people who complete their studies to provide more certainty to employers hesitant about those graduate's working rights, making it easier to find work in high skill jobs.
But the overall tightening is expected to impact how many international students will be able to study here, which will have consequences for universities reliant on foreign student fees.
"What we're really talking about here is making sure that the international student education system is doing what it says on the label, that is, educating [and] bringing young minds from around the region ... that is not always the case today," Ms O'Neil said.
"This is not about reducing the number but I think it is inevitable when we list standards that there may be some implications for numbers."
