Migration plan gets resource skills priority right

Migration plan gets resource skills priority right

The Minerals Council of Australia has backed the Albanese Government's decision to give greater priority to skilled resource workers under its new migration plan, recognising the critical role our workforce plays in keeping Australia's economy strong.

The Government's plan makes sense. Migration should be set at a level Australia can reasonably absorb, with housing, infrastructure and essential services keeping pace. Our system should focus on bringing in the skills the country genuinely needs, while maintaining confidence that the system is working as intended.

At a time when Australia needs more investment, more jobs and stronger growth, mining continues to do much of the heavy lifting.

Mining is Australia's largest export industry. It supports hundreds of thousands of Australian workers, tens of thousands of businesses and regional communities across the country. The taxes and royalties generated by mining help governments pay for the schools, hospitals, roads, defence and other services Australians rely on every day.

But none of that happens without people.

Australia needs engineers to design our mines, geologists to find the next generation of resources, electricians and diesel fitters to keep operations running and highly skilled specialists to turn minerals in the ground into jobs, exports and opportunities for Australians.

Employing and training Australians will always be the minerals industry's first priority. But there are critical skills we simply cannot always find here in the numbers or timeframes needed.

The MCA raised serious concerns in August about changes introduced in July that pushed many skilled applicants outside Australia further down the visa processing queue.

Those changes risked making it harder for mining companies to bring in highly specialised workers who are in short supply in Australia, despite skilled migrants making up just 1.24 per cent of the minerals workforce.

Today's announcement shows the Government has heard those concerns. The next test is whether it makes a difference on the ground.

The real measure of these changes will be whether an Australian mining company looking for an engineer, geologist, metallurgist or other critical specialist can actually get that person here faster.

Australia is competing with the rest of the world for these people. If it takes too long to bring them here, they will go somewhere else - and the projects, investment and jobs they support can go with them.

Every critical vacancy filled sooner can help keep a mine operating, get a new project moving, support Australian businesses in the supply chain and strengthen the regional communities that depend on them.