Peter Dutton an unexpected winner of Albo’s jobs summit
Peter Dutton has released a defiant ad on social media after snubbing the Prime Minister’s job summit on Friday.
Age pensioners will be able to work more hours without having their payments reduced under a plan unveiled at the jobs and skills summit.
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.
DUTTON’S DEFIANT MESSAGE AFTER SNUB
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who skipped the jobs summit, released a defiant video advertisement on social media on Friday afternoon.
The video slams CFMMEU leader Christy Cain as a “militant” head of a group of “thugs”.
In the clip, Mr Cain is heard saying he considers Mr Dutton “part of the menu”.
“It’s an old saying, if you’re not at the table, you’re part of the menu,” Mr Cain says.
“Mr Dutton, you’re not here, and you’ve had plenty to say about my union.
“And you couldn’t even come to this conference.”
The video finishes with a comment written across the screen: “You’re right. I don’t want to legitimise CFMMEU thugs.”
A few people have asked if I regret not attending Labor’s Union Summit. The short answer is no. pic.twitter.com/RqHeuUEtBd
— Peter Dutton (@PeterDutton_MP) September 2, 2022
BOOST TO MIGRATION INTAKE
Australia will take in 35,000 more migrants under its permanent migration program and speed up visas for foreign workers.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil announced Australia’s permanent migration cap would be lifted from 160,000 to a record 195,000 places this year.
She made the announcement at the summit on Friday at a session on the role of skilled migration in resolving skills and labour shortages.
“Australia’s migration system is not serving our needs. And I think we should change it. Because the coming 30 years will look very different for Australia than the last 30 did,” she said.
“And that shift (is) moving away from a system which is almost entirely focused on how we keep people out, to one that recognises that we are in a global war for talent.”
FORREST SAYS HELP NEEDED 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.
‘GREATER EMPLOYER FLEXIBILITY, GOVERNMENT REFORMS NEEDED’
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.”
AUSTRALIA TO FOCUS ON PERMANENT MIGRATION PATHWAYS
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said the federal government had shifted its focus from temporary migration to permanency and pathways to citizenship.
The regions will get 34,000 permanent migrants or 9000 more than the previous target, under the lifting of the cap.
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.
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 summit, which he and other members of the federal Liberal Party said was too focused on unions.
Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan said Labor needed to provide detail about how a higher skilled migrant cap would address the skills shortage.
“What skills will they target? What visas will be used? What additional resources will be provided and when will they be available?”
“It will be Labor’s responsibility to ensure that planning, housing and infrastructure provision keep pace with their migration intake to ensure quality of life is maintained for all Australians.”
$36.1m TO GO TOWARDS CLEARING VISA BACKLOG
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles told the summit the Albanese government would spend $36.1m on clearing the visa backlog of almost 1 million workers.
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 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.”
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.
‘REGIONAL AUSTRALIA SHOULDN’T BE FORGOTTEN’
David Littleproud has thrown his support behind permanent migration pathways for people who move to the regions.
Speaking at jobs summit, 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.”
‘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.
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