Christopher Pyne: Reopen the border to skilled migrants or every Australian will suffer

If Australia doesn’t start allowing skilled migrants back into our country quickly, we’ll all be worse off and stuck in a stagnant backwater, says Christopher Pyne.

One of the genuine costs of the coronavirus pandemic is the hit to the replenishment and growth of the skills base in Australia and South Australia.

With closed international borders and limited movement within Australia, the normal influx of new migrants that refills the pond of retiring or exiting skilled workers has reduced to a trickle. Free movement of people has, understandably, all but stopped.

The effect of skilled workers not being able to go to where the jobs are within Australia, and skilled workers overseas being delayed from entering Australia, will have profound impacts on our economy and standard of living. While an underperforming skills base for industry and business is not immediately felt, largely because businesses make do with what they’ve got for as long as they can, the medium and long-term effect is very serious. Without the necessary skills and expertise an industry cannot grow, a company cannot thrive and will go out of business or certainly perform below its capacity. Towns will disappear.

If that sounds alarmist, imagine if mango growers in the Northern Territory can’t get enough pickers? It’s seasonal work; the towns sustained by that industry swell and contract depending on the crop.

While the Australian government is working hard to help South Pacific Islanders enter the country under the Pacific Labour Scheme in order to fill these jobs, because of the coronavirus, it is a difficult process. It isn’t their fault, but that fact doesn’t assist getting the mangoes picked. But that is just one unique example.

The situation in the defence and space industry is even more dire. The Australian government is engaged in the largest build up of our military capability in our peacetime history.

More significantly, it has adopted a policy over the past five years or so of investing in our sovereign defence industry capability. In other words, being self-reliant in the design, manufacture, maintenance and sustainment of critical platforms to our survival in the event of war.

Here in Adelaide, this is particularly obvious at the Osborne Naval Shipyard in submarine and ship construction and maintenance, including the recently announced “life-of-type extension” for the Collins-class submarine, the Next Generation nuclear-powered submarine, as well as the $35bn Hunter-class anti-submarine warfare frigate and the upgrade of the Hobart-class air-warfare destroyer.

But this story is repeated all around Australia. The Australian government is committed to a $100bn Sovereign Missile enterprise, combat reconnaissance vehicles, howitzers, amphibious landing craft, Arafura-class patrol boats, the Loyal Wingman unmanned aircraft, and on it goes.

All these programs not only require a skills base to deliver them, they also need project managers, planners, engineers, scientists and assessors, to name just a few professions, to plan and execute them on Russell Hill in the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group that oversees these, both small and immense, projects.

The scale is far beyond anything we have attempted before. For example, there isn’t one Australian who exists today who has been trained in the stewardship of a nuclear-powered propulsion system.

Many of these skilled people will need to be found in Australia and trained sufficiently.

Many others will need to be brought to Australia as skilled migrants to make sure the wheels of government and industry keep turning. The idea that we can grow our economy and deliver what we need to in infrastructure, defence, space, medicine, mining and engineering with the current Australian population and skills base is farcical.

Post the coronavirus pandemic, the Australian and South Australian governments will address this skills capability shortfall.

To do anything else would put our economic recovery and our national security at risk.

The same story is true for tourism and hospitality, aged care, research and development of new products, and services and higher education.

Many sectors of the economy rely on new skills, new thinking and, therefore, new people to grow.

Suffice to say, a skills crunch is coming.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry published a report recently that stated, post the coronavirus pandemic, Australia’s growth will slow from 2.7 per cent of Gross Domestic Product per year to 2.1 per cent without addressing the deficiencies in the skills base of the workforce.

As a higher-population advocate, I welcome the idea of more skilled migrants to our shores. Migrants create jobs, economic activity and enrich our society.

For those who think we can have a Fortress Australia and keep the migration levels that exist now because of the coronavirus pandemic, be prepared for lower growth, less jobs and a poorer standard of living than you have enjoyed in the past.

Because, London to a brick, that’s the alternative.

Christopher Pyne is an adviser to defence, space and agricultural companies.