Four in five foreign tradies knocked back from even applying for skilled visas

Only one in five foreign tradies who expressed interest in coming to Australia was invited to apply for a visa in the first year-and-a-half of the Albanese government as the nation grappled with a growing housing crisis.

The Home Affairs figures come as a statutory body created by the government said it placed yoga teachers ahead of some building trades on a draft core-skills migration list, in line with requirements set under Labor’s migration strategy despite the government saying the entity is independent.

Just one in five foreign tradies who express an interest in working in Australia are invited to apply.Credit: Paul Jeffers

Dismay over Jobs and Skills Australia’s draft list has now spread from the building industry to the early learning sector, with peak body the Australian Childcare Alliance pushing for vocationally trained educators to be placed on the definite roster of needed occupations.

The government said it granted 10,540 visas to tradies in the previous financial year and is on track to surpass that number for the current financial year.

But Home Affairs data supplied in response to Coalition questions from a Senate committee earlier this year shows that while 6000 accountants were invited to come to Australia between June 2022 and November 2023, trades were way down the list of occupations asked to apply to plug Australia’s skills shortage.

Figures from the same period show just 23 per cent of plumbers, 24 per cent of bricklayers, 21 per cent of electricians, and 18 per cent of carpenters and joiners who submitted expressions of interest to apply for a skilled visa through Australia’s Skillselect system were then invited to do so.

Across the four key professions, 600 of the 2972 people who expressed interest were invited to apply – 20 per cent.

This masthead sought comment from Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil and her department on the low percentage of invitations, as well as information on the statistics before the election and since December last year.

Coalition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan said Immigration Minister Andrew Giles needed to explain the figures.

“Australians are experiencing a housing crisis coupled with a shortage of skilled workers, meanwhile Labor is inviting more accountants and solicitors to apply for citizenship [rather] than people with the skills to build more homes,” he said.

Golfers, real estate agents and amusement centre managers were among the occupations added to the skilled occupation list during the Coalition’s time in government.

Immigration Department former deputy secretary Abul Rizvi said the number of expressions of interest had always vastly exceeded the number of invitations “and always will”. He said the main reason prospective migrants were not being asked to apply was because their claims about their skills did not stack up.

“The main one they tend to exaggerate is their skilled work experience,” Rizvi said. “For example, it turns out you were a labourer, not a carpenter.”

He also said some EOIs (expressions of interest) may simply not meet the pass mark for the skilled visa points test, which the government has pledged to rework, and some could be from people already in Australia on other visas.

He said Skillselect was the dominant pathway through which skilled migrants came, with employer sponsorships making up another key avenue, however, he said the data didn’t appear to show visa invitations made by the states or regional authorities, who also have input into visa applications.

The intersection between migration and housing supply has become a key political battleground, with O’Neil in December committing to an overhaul of the skilled migration system by both reducing the number of temporary arrivals and targeting areas of economic need.

As part of its reform agenda, the government has tasked Job Skills Australia (JSA), a Labor-created statutory body, with advising it on priority occupations that could then be funnelled through new visa streams separated by job type and pay thresholds.

JSA attracted controversy this week after it was revealed it had placed occupations such as yoga instructors and martial artists on a draft list it was confident would be included in the new core-skills stream, however was still consulting on trades such as plumbers, bricklayers and cabinetmakers.

Government ministers asserted the independence of the body, however, JSA commissioner Barney Glover revealed during a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday the inclusion of the yoga instructors was in adherence to criteria dictated by Labor’s migration strategy launched late last year.

Jobs and Skills Australia commissioner Barney Glover told a parliamentary hearing the body was responding to the government’s criteria.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

“The criteria for being considered to go onto the core-skills occupation list involves consideration of the skills shortage, consideration of domestic supply, consideration of employment outcomes. That’s what we were required to do under the migration strategy,” he said, adding JSA’s own modelling also went into the process.

A JSA spokesperson said occupations identified as being confidently on the list “are supported by data that demonstrates strong outcomes for both migrant and domestic workers”.

Childcare Alliance president Paul Mondo said the body had also written to JSA after seeing university-trained early educators were on the draft list, but said it was still consulting on vocationally trained workers who make up the majority of staff in centres across the country.

He said migration wasn’t a panacea for the industry’s skills shortage but was part of the solution. “It is something to have in the toolkit for some childcare centres to have if they’ve exhausted all the pathways of employing locally,” he said.

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