Push to recognise overseas qualifications before unions and business clash on tax
By Paul Sakkal and Shane Wright
Nurses, engineers and other immigrants with qualifications from overseas would be able to work in Australia under a proposal that won support at Tuesday’s economic roundtable as unions and bosses jousted over a bid to slap a new tax on businesses.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers hailed the first day of the three-day Canberra talkfest as a moment of consensus on skills reform, prompting Labor to do an about-face and start drafting a joint statement of intent after last week downplaying expectations of any international summit-style statement.
The Albanese government’s economic roundtable is under way.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
As Chalmers prepared to oversee disputes over artificial intelligence at Wednesday’s session, he lauded the collaboration of economists, captains of industry and workers’ representatives, who he said had “really risen to the occasion”.
But other sources in the closed-off cabinet room said the meeting was highly stage-managed. “No one is challenging anyone,” one participant said on the condition of anonymity.
Former Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe launched a significant attack on Labor’s economic record, saying in a clip released as the roundtable began that Chalmers had spent more at a time when restraint was needed to bring down inflation.
“After COVID, we haven’t really got back to a clearly articulated framework for decision-making with fiscal policy,” Lowe said in a video recorded a month ago and released on Tuesday by the University of NSW and think tank e61.
Noting that higher interest rates were the chief tool used to tackle inflation, Lowe said “exercising discipline is not popular, and exercising restraint is not popular. It’s much easier for the political class to say, if things need to slow, we’ll get the central bank to do that with interest rates, and they can, they can take the blame.”
At the roundtable, there was broad backing for slashing another tranche of so-called “nuisance tariffs” – tiny charges on imports which add to compliance costs and consumer prices.
But trade union bosses at the high-profile talkfest, including the ACTU’s Sally McManus, raised concerns about acknowledging some foreign degrees and warned that industries would need to be protected if tariffs were removed.
Any move to allow more people to work in professional sectors would probably face pushback from powerful groups that represent large groups of workers. The Royal Australian College of GPs criticised the fast-tracking of international doctors’ registration last year, but Australian Medical Association head Danielle McMullen said on Monday night that the sector was supportive.
Independent MP Allegra Spender was a key advocate for skills recognition in Tuesday’s session, along with former Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson.
“We’ve got migrants here who I’ve met. They’ve been brought here because they’re electricians and then they can’t properly use all their skills, or they are qualified nurses, we desperately need them, but they’re moving back to France,” Spender said. “They can’t get that recognition.”
Spender said there was “really strong” consensus on skills recognition in the meeting chaired by Chalmers, including the need to streamline licensing schemes across states so that people could more easily work across borders.
Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus at the meeting on Tuesday.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Australian Industry Group boss Innes Willox said: “We’re missing out on the inputs of millions of people in our economy because they’re not being given an opportunity to work in the field. Whether it’s across the care sector, engineering, tech.”
Unions also proposed a 1.5 per cent payroll levy on businesses with turnover of more than $500,000 to fund worker training. The idea was rejected by industry groups, including Master Builders Australia and the Business Council of Australia, and Willox, who called the idea a “crock of shit”.
Among the 315 nuisance tariffs in the government’s sights are a 5 per cent impost on imported air conditioners and a similar tariff on cast iron pipes and tubes.
While most at the roundtable supported the move on tariffs, ACTU assistant secretary Liam O’Brien expressed some caution.
“It’s vitally important that industry workers, unions, and indeed employees in those industries, are consulted,” he said.
The roundtable will reconvene on Wednesday and Thursday to talk tax, artificial intelligence and budget sustainability.
BHP chief executive Mike Henry said it was vital the roundtable came up with policies that made Australia a more attractive place to invest, as other nations were taking “pretty aggressive steps”.
Henry, who is due to attend the roundtable, said reducing red tape, including in the permit process for new projects, also had to be addressed.
“Time is money, and risk, when it comes to major capital projects. So the more straightforward, expedient and certain we can make the permitting process, including removing some of the duplication between the feds and the states, the better,” he said.
Chalmers described the first day of the roundtable as promising and productive.
“Whether it’s skills matching or simplifying trade, capital attraction or technological change, there’s a lot of consensus building in the room already,” he said.
AustralianSuper chief executive Paul Schroder said the talkfest had to tackle retirement policies.
“Let’s also cut the red tape on Australians as they approach retirement. It should be much easier to get a pension, access your super and still be OK to go back to do a little bit of work after you retire,” he said.
There are also hopes of a new boom in bank lending to credit-starved small businesses after bank and superannuation fund bosses used the roundtable to hash out a new plan to de-risk lending to smaller players, according to sources in the room.
While the government has downplayed expectations of major announcements at the end of the roundtable, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese suggested some changes could be put in place within days.
“There’ll be things that we can do immediately,” he said. “Jim [Chalmers] and Katy [Gallagher] will take to the cabinet processes in the coming days literally and say, ‘Righto, this is a good idea, we can get this done.’”
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