The immigration fix is in

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ABC’s Insiders yesterday was focused solely on this week’s Jobs & Skills Summit and confirmed without a shadow of a doubt that Australia’s immigration intake will be lifted to record highs.

According to Insiders, “wherever you look crippling shortages of nurses, teachers, aged care and childcare, hospitality, IT and other skilled workers are holding the economy back”. So “unions and businesses agree broadly on the need to boost productivity, bring in more skilled migrants and improve skills training here”.

SBS’ Anna Henderson captured the overriding theme of the show when she claimed “that with the unemployment rate as low as it is, we’ve king of maxed it [the labour force] out unless we go into the retirees, get more working mums and parents back to work. So it has to go down this path [i.e. mass immigration]. People have forgotten that we had barely any migration, so don’t we have a way to catch up before we even have this political argument about why it’s not Australian made?”

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.