Jobs Summit Day Two: Pensioners to be able to work more; Australian migrant cap lifted
Laws determining how much Australian pensioners can earn are set for a major overhaul, the PM has announced.
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Age pensioners will be able to work more hours without having their payments reduced under a plan unveiled at the jobs and skills summit.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made the announcement as he wrapped up the two-day summit on Friday, making Peter Dutton an unlikely winner of the event he chose to snub.
The Opposition Leader, who earlier on Friday said he felt “vindicated” in his decision not to attend the summit, had proposed pension reforms.
Mr Dutton had called for pensioners to be able to earn up to $600 a fortnight, up from $300, before their government allowance began to taper off.
The Prime Minister said the government would provide a “new $4,000 work income bank credit” for pensioners.
“They can earn more income before their pension is reduced,” Mr Albanese said.
“We will move so that instead of pensioners having their payments cancelled after 12 weeks if they exceed (the income threshold), they won’t have to reapply for payments for up to two years.
“And they will retain the pensioner concession card for 2 years.”
Mr Albanese said he thought the jobs summit had been an “extraordinary success”.
He thanked the participants for “leaving old disagreements behind”.
“This summit was designed to serve the everyday Australians whose courage and initiative and hard work help power our national prosperity,” he said.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said he would release a list of 36 “concrete steps” the government would take as a result of the summit.
MIGRANT CAP LIFTED
Australia will allow 35,000 more migrants into the country, the Home Affairs Minister has announced.
Clare O’Neil opened the second session of the day at the Jobs and Skills Summit on the role of skilled migration in resolving skills and labour shortages - and confirmed Australia’s permanent migration program would be lifted this year from 160,000 to 195,000 places as a way to address the issues.
She said the federal government’s focus had shifted from temporary migration to permanency and pathways to citizenship.
The regions will get 34,000 permanent migrants, or 9000 more than the previous target. The state-sponsored spots will lift from 11,000 to 31,000.
Ms O’Neil detailed the extent of the nation’s skills crisis, which she said was “real and affecting all of us”.
“We have nurses who cannot work for double and triple shifts that they have been pulling for the last three years,” she said.
“We have got an agricultural workforce where farmers are having to leave fruit on vines, rotting, because there is no one to pick them,” she said.
Ms O’Neil said the Covid-19 pandemic had presented a rare opportunity to reform the country’s immigration system.
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles told the summit the Albanese government would spend $36.1m towards clearing the visa backlog.
The money will be spent on hiring a surge workforce of 500 more department staff over the next 9 months.
“Visa processing for too long has been neglected, with far-reaching consequences for our economy and our society,” Mr Giles said.
“There were almost 1 million visas waiting for this government at the election. Today that number is 900,000. We understand that when people wait and wait that the uncertainty can become unmanageable.”
Peter Dutton criticised Labor for waiting until the jobs summit to announce the lifting of the permanent migration cap.
“The decision should have been made 100 days ago when the government was elected but they didn’t do that,” the Opposition Leader told reporters in Queensland on Friday morning.
“We do need an increase in the migration numbers, but we’ll see what the government actually delivers because this can be many, many months, if not a couple of years, in the pipeline.
“So these are all grand announcements, I want to see the rubber hit the road.”
Mr Dutton said he felt “vindicated” in his decision not to attend the jobs summit, which he and other members of the federal Liberal party have said is too focused on unions.
AUSTRALIA NEEDS TO ADDRESS ‘SCOURGE’
Mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest has told the jobs summit that vulnerable Australians need more support to help them “get off drugs and alcohol”.
“It seriously breaks my heart that we’re not yet able as a country to address this scourge,” he said.
“And when we do, we apply the same old formulas, and I can tell you we’re identifying with Einstein’s interpretation of insanity, hoping for a different result, doing it the same way.”
Speaking at the same session, the acting head of Australia’s peak welfare advocacy body has repeated her call for the JobSeeker rate to be lifted to $70 a day.
Australian Council of Social Services acting chief executive Edwina MacDonald said there were 930,000 people on unemployment payments who were “locked out” of paid work.
“We must acknowledge that the major barrier to employment that they face every day is simply not having enough money to survive, to pay the rent, to pay for medicine, and to cover three meals a day,” she told the jobs summit.
Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth earlier this week ruled out any increase to the unemployment allowance in the Albanese government’s first budget, which will be handed down in October.
Ms Rishworth told the session on policy levers to increase workforce participation that the government would need to overcome “long-term challenges” to make its support systems work.
ALCOTT CALLS FOR REFORMS
Australian of the Year Dylan Alcott has called for federal government reforms to disability programs to boost participation in the workforce.
Speaking at a jobs summit session on changing community attitudes and tackling discrimination, the tennis champ said there were National Disability Insurance Scheme participants and Disability Support Pension recipients who wanted to work but couldn’t.
Mr Alcandott said NDIS “red tape” should be cut so participants could spend their budgets how they wanted including to build their capacity to work.
He also said the DSP rules should be modified so recipients could work more hours without having their pensions cut.
“I am privileged and every single person in this room is very privileged to have multiple jobs and multiple opportunities throughout your lives,” he said.
“People with disability deserve that same choice to get out there and be the people that they want to be.”
Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth said increased employer flexibility could be part of the solution to workforce shortages.
“There’s more than 300,000 people in Australia who are unemployed or underemployed and have some capacity to work or increase their hours, so what’s holding them back from taking up these vacancies?” she said.
“We’ve also heard at our roundtables from those with lived experience that it can be just simple things.
“It could be that a person is applying for a job, but has been turned away because the job specifications are too rigid and do not actually reflect the skills needed for the job.”
PUSH TO FOCUS ON REGIONAL AUSTRALIA
David Littleproud has thrown his support behind permanent migration pathways for people who move to the regions.
Speaking at the third session of the day, the Nationals leader said there seemed to be a “unity ticket” regarding the consensus on permanency for people who take agricultural or regional skills visas.
“We’ve had enough of them coming picking crops and passing through, we want them to live in regional Australia,” he said.
Mr Littleproud said 172,000 additional workers were needed to prevent a food security crisis, citing contributions from the National Farmers’ Federation and the Council of Small Business Organisations.
“And it’s not just in the agricultural sector in regional areas. It’s also in many of the schools, pubs, mechanics, we need a whole range of it,” he said.
“I’ve got pubs, even in my electorate, in Barcaldine, the hometown of the Labor Party, where the pubs aren’t open for a feed at night. They simply can’t get cooks.”
Mr Littleproud said he wanted young Australians to be offered opportunities to be educated, to work and stay in the regions.
“I don’t want to just sit here and think that we’re here just for migration. I think it is important we want to invest in Australia and Australians,” he said.
Australian Workers’ Union national secretary Daniel Walton said his union would “strangely, probably have an alignment” with Mr Littleproud when it came to education and training opportunities in the regions.
“Despite the low unemployment rate around the rest of the country, in regional centres it is still incredibly hard for young workers,” he said.
“And so I think that is a big place where we could get enormous productivity uplift for the whole country, if we can get young Australians trained in regional centres to get into the workforce.”
$36.1m TO GO TOWARDS CLEARING VISA BACKLOG
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles told the summit the Albanese government would spend $36.1m towards clearing the visa backlog.
The money will be spent on hiring a surge workforce of 500 more department staff over the next nine months.
“Visa processing for too long has been neglected, with far-reaching consequences for our economy and our society,” Mr Giles said.
“There were almost one million visas waiting for this government at the election. Today that number is 900,000. We understand that when people wait and wait that the uncertainty can become unmanageable.”
Mr Giles also flagged an increase in the income thresholds for work visas for the first time in almost a decade.
Work visas currently require a minimum wage of $53,900 a year.
Business groups have warned that too large an increase to the threshold would stifle opportunities to get workers in occupations that are vital but lower paid.
Mr Giles said it was also “vital to address migrant worker exploitation” and that there would be actions taken in this area next year.
‘TAFE REFORM NEEDED TO TRAIN WORKERS FOR THE FUTURE’
Earlier on Friday, the head of one of Australia’s largest employer organisations said the skills shortage is being exacerbated by teenagers wanting to become “influencers rather than engineers”.
Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox welcomed the Albanese government’s decision to fund 180,000 new fee free TAFE places.
Speaking at the jobs and skills summit on Friday, Mr Willox said young Australians needed to be encouraged to pursue in-demand careers through the “reinvigoration” of the apprenticeship system.
He said the national conversation around skills felt like “groundhog day” given he had raised the skills shortage crisis with the nation’s premiers and then-prime minister six years earlier.
“We need urgent and wholehearted action that makes a significant down payment on developing a pipeline of skilled workers for at least the next decade,” he said.
“Enough of the excuses. This plan must deliver bold generational reform. A history of tepid reform has left us unprepared and wasted precious time and money.
“It now seems that our teenagers would rather be influencers than engineers.”
Participants of the summit’s first session on skills and training for the future labour market discussed ways to address the country’s dearth of skilled workers, including by reforming the TAFE system.
Skills and Training Minister Brendan O’Connor said combination of migration and training domestic workers would be used to alleviate the skills crisis.
Anthony Albanese unveiled the billion-dollar TAFE package a day earlier, announcing 180,000 additional fee-free places would be made available for 2023.
National cabinet signed off on the jointly funded $1.1bn package when it met on Wednesday.
“It’s my great hope that this jobs and skills summit marks the beginning of a new culture of co-operation, a new focus on working together to deal with the urgent challenges that our economy is facing,” the Prime Minister said.
Originally published as Jobs Summit Day Two: Pensioners to be able to work more; Australian migrant cap lifted
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