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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-11-26 Daily Xml
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General Skilled Migration

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (15:35): My question is to the Deputy Premier. Will the state government lobby the Australian government to increase the quota of skilled migration program places that are available? Mr Speaker, with your leave and the leave of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: The number of registrations for the 2024-25 General Skilled Migration program has exceeded the quota available, in particular for chefs, motor mechanics and nurses. In my electorate there are tourism towns crying out for chefs. Business owners are being forced down the expensive sponsorship route with no certainty that they will be successful that staff will stay.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water, Minister for Workforce and Population Strategy) (15:36): This is an important question for South Australia and indeed for Australia, and I find it beyond mystifying and horrifying the way in which the Leader of the Opposition in Canberra has chosen to politicise yet again migration, including for international students in a way that is unhelpful for the economic prosperity of regional South Australia as well as South Australia as a whole.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: We won't start talking about the international students and what the Liberals in Canberra are doing to international students. But the challenge for regional towns and also for Adelaide of course is this question of how we can get enough skilled people at the same time as putting a huge amount of money into training, as both the Labor federal government and Labor state government have been doing, so that we train up our own people as well. The answer to workforce planning is of course to do both. I pay tribute to the education minister for the way in which free TAFE and the increase in vocational training funding is already making a difference and will continue to over the next several years.

There are two real ways to get skilled migrants into South Australia. One is through that general migration scheme through coming to South Australia, but the person with the skill chooses to apply to come to South Australia because we have asked for chefs and so on. That number was dramatically cut last year for South Australia; this year we have been able to see a bit of an increase. We were given 3,800 places, but as the member points out those fill up pretty quickly because people are very keen to come to Australia and to South Australia.

The other is directed by the employer through the DAMA process, which was established under the previous Liberal government here in South Australia, to have employer-sponsored and employer-led visas available to get skilled migrants here. There is a capacity to have chefs through that, and I understand they were the second most requested occupation in South Australia. That does underscore exactly what the member is saying in terms of that need to have people come through. At the same time, as the member said in his explanation, it can be very onerous for small businesses in particular to go through the process of applying through the DAMA to get someone to come to this country and also the costs up-front can be very difficult to manage for a small business.

We have been advocating for some time to remodel the DAMA to make it simpler for small to medium businesses, but particularly for small businesses. We had a rollover of the current DAMA only for a year with the addition of some occupation categories, including very many in construction, but we only did the rollover for a year in order to give us more time to work closely with the federal government about making that administration simpler. We are also working with the federal government about having trailing fees so that the fees come after someone is able to already get the staff member, rather than that very challenging up-front fee cost.

So the concern that has been expressed by the member is well understood by the government. We are working hard with the federal government on how we can make it simpler and easier to get people here. I have the migration minister's round table on Friday, where I will again raise these issues, again urge the federal government to continue to allow the skilled migrants that we require for our prosperity while at the same time paying attention to make sure that the education and training required for South Australians to be skilled up is prioritised.

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