Restricting 457 visas will hurt technology sector

When Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes talks, it’s time to listen.

When Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes talks, it’s time to listen.

Cannon-Brookes has not only founded one of the most successful Australian companies in recent years (with his friend Scott Farquhar), which now has a market capitalisation of more than $6 billion, he is responsible for creating thousands of new jobs here and overseas.

Not yet 40, he is a self-made billionaire with a global business in a highly competitive market.

Atlassian, which has offices around the world, including Sydney, San Francisco and Austin, Texas, is regularly voted as one of the best companies to work for and has a long history of supporting charities and giving scholarships to talented young Australians.

Like others in the tech and start-up sector in Australia, Cannon-Brookes is concerned at proposals in Canberra to tighten Australia’s 457 visa program, which allows companies such as Atlassian to bring in skilled migrants — talent that just doesn’t exist in Australia given the relatively short life of its tech industry.

In an interview with The Australian’s tech writer David Swan and the ABC’s Fran Kelly this week, Cannon-Brookes warned that a crackdown on 457 visas would damage the growth of the local tech industry.

The most serious anti-457 visa move has come from opposition leader Bill Shorten who this week introduced a private member’s bill into federal parliament — the Migration Amendment (Putting Local Workers First) Bill — which would tighten up the controls around the issuance of 457 visas.

The bill would introduce more rigorous requirements for labour-market testing for firms to use 457 visas, require companies to advertise jobs for at least four weeks locally before they bring in a foreign worker, and impose a raft of other conditions on employers seeking to bring in foreign skilled workers.

Although Shorten claims to have had the idea about tightening up on skilled migration visas for some time, his nationalistic comments about putting Australian’s first in the days following the US election smacked of political opportunism.

There is nothing wrong with reviewing the 457 visa system for allowable skilled migration categories in the light of changing economic circumstances, or stamping out practices that result in the exploitation and abuse of foreign workers.

Cannon-Brookes is not talking about bringing in people to work on farms or in convenience stores and petrol stations.

But the total number of people coming in on 457 visas has already gone down from 70,000 a year a few years ago to 45,000 today. The tech industry is one of the biggest users of the visas, working within a ceiling of 5000 a year.

Cannon-Brookes can see that the political rush to exploit anti-migration sentiment will inevitably hit companies such as his.

Founded in 2002, Atlassian has 2000 employees around the world including 1000 in Australia. Twenty five per cent of its Australian workforce are on 457 visas. Most are software engineers.

As he points out, Australia produces only 2000 computer science graduates a year — far less than the 5000 foreign workers that come into the country on 457 visas. The real demand, he says, is more than 7000 workers.

More importantly, the Australian graduates don’t have the 10 or 15 years of experience that a foreigner might have working in Silicon Valley.

Atlassian would prefer to hire as much of its local workforce as possible in Australia.

Foreign workers in the tech industry cost more to start with and then there is the time and money spent transferring them to Australia. While Australians like to think their country is an attractive place to live, for many Americans in Silicon Valley and the broader tech industry, and other highly skilled workers overseas, a move to Australia means stepping off a potentially more lucrative career path at home — not to mention leaving family and friends behind.

But as Cannon-Brookes points out, having skilled and experienced software engineers come to Australia allows the development of the local industry and the training of Australian graduates by world-class industry experts.

“The biggest single thing we lack is senior technical talent with deep expertise in the volumes that we need for the industry to keep growing,” he told Swan.

“Every single start-up (in Australia) has very similar problems when they start to scale.”

Atlassian hired 81 new graduates last year and has sponsored 35 Australians to study computer science. But, as he says, it is impossible to train them up to the skill level of people with a decade or more experience offshore for jobs that must be filled right now. A year ago Malcolm Turnbull was outlining measures to make Australia a more innovative nation. This included freeing up visa restrictions to allow more foreign tech experts to work here — a measure specifically requested by the local industry.

But for some reason innovation seems to have become a politically inconvenient word this year with politicians concerned it does might not go down well with the electorate.

With innovation driving the industries and the jobs of the future around the world, it is gobsmacking and a little terrifying to think that Australians now have to pretend that innovation doesn’t matter or isn’t a good idea.

The job of a leader, Cannon-Brookes points out, is to set the right policies and explain them to the electorate. Something is very odd when a successful entrepreneur who wants to expand their business and that of others coming behind him has to argue the case for innovation in a country which is still far too dependent on what it digs out of the ground.