The Australian government has been called on to increase the intake of immigrants admitted each year from 190,000 to 220,000.
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30 January 2014
Australian government lobbied to increase immigration intake
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A group that lobbies on behalf of Australian industry has called on the Australian government to immediately increase the annual intake of immigrants admitted each year from 190,000 to 220,000.
The Australian Industry (Ai) Group is headed by Chief Executive Innes Willox, who has written to the Australian immigration minister Scott Morrison pushing for the government to increase skilled migration, given Australia's ageing workforce and skills shortages in industries including mining, construction, engineering and health.
In Mr Willox's letter, he explains that immigration is necessary "to support positive growth in our population and especially in our adult workforce, due to relatively low rates of natural population growth."
Mr Willox continued: "The Australian Workplace Productivity Agency has identified that Australia will need an increase of about 2.8 million people with quite specific skills over the next decade to fill some of those gap.
"We need to find ways to fill those gaps, and obviously we can train our own, but the quickest stop gap measure is to import skills.
"Employers are increasingly concerned about the skill levels of graduates both from universities and schools, and this is something that we need to address.
"We've seen Australia slipping down the tables when it comes to those basic skills around our science, technology, engineering, mathematics skills."
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