A new alliance of businesses and unions says the country’s chronic shortage of workers is being made worse by confusing and expensive qualification systems. The group says nurses and engineers arriving from overseas on the government’s skilled migration program are waiting tables or stacking shelves while their professions are understaffed.
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00:00Antonio Michel was a specialist trauma physio in Chile for 10 years. In Australia he's starting
00:09from scratch.
00:10I spent a lot of time with people in rural areas that were waiting for months to get
00:15a private physiotherapy appointment and at the same time I was sweeping flooring construction
00:20sites.
00:21The 38-year-old is fronting a new alliance of 50 business groups and unions urging the
00:27government to streamline skills recognition schemes.
00:30Dentists and doctors driving rideshare, of engineers and electricians stacking shelves.
00:38The group's research found 44% of skilled migrants who come to Australia are working
00:43below their ability. Two thirds of those people came on the federal government's skilled
00:49migration program.
00:50We know that we have huge untapped potential in Australia's overseas trained workers.
00:56The building industry is short 90,000 people at a time where the government is desperately
01:01trying to boost housing supply. The alliance says construction workers are being brought
01:06in on skilled visas but struggle to transfer their qualifications.
01:12Skills Minister Andrew Giles says the government's already spending $1.8 million to streamline
01:18skills assessments for 1,900 construction workers.
01:22There's regulatory bottlenecks and there's different approaches to licensing and quality
01:26in the different states and territories.
01:29Businesses and unions want the federal government to appoint an ombudsman to oversee the dozens
01:34of industry groups that are registering overseas workers to cut red tape and to make it easier
01:40for skilled migrants to fill vacancies.
01:43It's also about the skilled worker coming in on the right visa at the right time to
01:48link with the right job and that's where this government has failed.
01:53With a third of occupations facing workforce shortages, industries say migrants are the
01:59only solution.