Labor’s 457 visas bill gets short shrift

Labor’s proposed changes to 457 visas are likely to exasperate an already dire skills shortage in the tech sector.

Luke Anear says it is difficult to find skilled workers. Picture: Wesley Monts

Labor’s proposed changes to 457 visas are likely to exasperate an already dire skills shortage in the Australian technology sector, industry stalwarts have warned.

SafetyCulture CEO Luke Anear told The Australian that the start-up sector recognised the need to hire local talent first. However, the pressure to grow and scale as quickly as possible meant businesses had little options than to tap overseas talent.

Labor leader Bill Shorten yesterday introduced a private bill including a requirement employers prove they have contributed to local employment when applying to sponsor workers on 457 visas, as well as other crackdowns.

However, Mr Anear warned that the populist rhetoric failed to address the systemic deficiencies in the labour market, especially when it came to the technology sector.

“It’s extremely difficult to find skilled workers in Australia,” Mr Anear said. “It’s much easier for us to work with local people if we can, but we are not producing enough of the skills needed for the biggest boom in history.”

While the current tech boom, according to Mr Anear, was Australia’s “biggest opportunity ever”, most of the local workforce was ill-equipped to immediately benefit from it. Filling this gap would take time but it was a luxury most start-ups could not ­afford, Mr Anear added.

SafetyCulture, which recently closed a $30 million Series B funding round and has offices in Townsville and Sydney, hires about 85 people, with about seven of those employed either on a 457 or 417 working holiday visa.

“I have to constantly get creative about building our brand and promoting Australia as a place to work,” Mr Anear said. “That’s part of my job now and I didn’t think we would be doing that as a tech company.”

Atlassian co-founder and chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes has branded the proposed 457 changes “hilarious political grandstanding”.

“I know if you’re a three-person company it’s hard to prove you’re hiring graduates or training university students, and certainly any 457 restriction is bad for our tech industry, which by extension is bad for our economy,” Mr Cannon-Brookes said.

“You could change 457 in the reverse direction; you could get 100,000 people coming here, rather than the 5000 currently. That would be one of the things we would ask them to do, and any investments in STEM, and in schools and universities are going to be long-term pay-offs for the government to make. And we’ve had a digital curriculum sitting on the shelf for five years now. Those long-term things are in danger of us falling behind.

“Every single job is going to require software or technology.”

With Atlassian now listed on the Nasdaq, Mr Cannon-Brookes added that a Donald Trump presidency could be an opportunity for Australia to poach US tech talent.

“I think (a Trump presidency) probably means not great things for the world, so we’ll wait and see, but if he cracks down on H-1B visas and some of the other things he’s talked about doing that could be good for our industry,” he said.

“There’s certainly a chance it’s good for Australia in terms of people moving overseas with a slight more impetus than they had before, and that’ll be good for Australia.”