Designated Area Migration Agreements

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (14:36): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier update the house on the government's two Designated Area Migration Agreements with the commonwealth and what it will mean for Adelaide and the regions?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:36): Well, finally, a decent question in parliament, somebody who is concerned about the future of this state, unlike the drivel we have had from those opposite today and this week. Sir, can I tell you that we have an ambition for our state. We want to get this state moving again, and I would like to thank the Morrison government, and in particular minister Coleman for the work that he has done backing our ambition to grow our regional populations. We all realise that there are some very significant skill shortages right across country SA. This puts a handbrake on the overall productive capacity of our state.

That's why we went to the most recent Council of Australian Governments (COAG) lobbying for changes to the migration settings for Australia, making sure that we didn’t continue with a cookie-cutter approach, a one-size-fits-all arrangement, for the entire nation because there are parts of our nation who do not want further migration to their states. We are not one of those. We have skill shortages, and we want to fill those skill shortages. We have been able to successfully negotiate with the federal government to establish two Designated Area Migration Agreements (DAMAs).

An honourable member interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: Those two are for regional South Australia and also for metropolitan South Australia around specific skill shortages in terms of innovation and some future industries.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: But I would like to concentrate on the regional area DAMA because I was asked the question by the member for Narungga. He, like many people on this side of the house, cares about regional communities in South Australia because, as my good friend the Minister for Primary Industries always says, #RegionsMatter. They do matter, not just in a hashtag for Twitter, but they really matter because people in the country would like to expand the overall productive capacity of their communities.

We know that there are skill shortages. We know that there are jobs that are going unfilled because there are no suitably qualified people in regional South Australia. What this DAMA allows us to do is bring in 750 people per year for the next five years to fill some of those skill shortages, and I'm pretty excited about it.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: We have been able to identify 117 occupations that people across regional South Australia had suggested to us are very important occupations that need to be filled. As we fill those particular occupations, we will expand the productive capacity of the regions, and that will create even more jobs for South Australians.

I emphasise, and this is a crucial point, that our primary focus is on making sure that South Australians fill any job vacancies. However, when there are job vacancies and they persist, we want to be able to do everything we can to plug that hole, and the federal government has been enormously helpful to us with this. They would like to see South Australia get up off the mat after 16 years of maladministration by those opposite.

We have a great ambition, and I must say that I am buoyed by some of the figures we have seen come out today regarding net interstate migration. In fact, the most recent statistics show that there has been a freefall in the net interstate migration out of South Australia. It is still too high, but we have a net interstate migration of 4,600. That is the net interstate migration figure, the most recent one we have just received from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. It is still too high and we will do everything we can to arrest that exodus from South Australia, but the good news is that it is now 31 per cent lower than the previous year.