Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Chisholm for her question. Today the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship made an important announcement about better targeting our skilled migration system to the skill needs of the Australian economy. In doing so the minister said:

We often hear that previous micro-economic reforms have laid the foundation of our current prosperity. Rarely do we hear recognition of the role played by Australia’s skilled migration program. It is the unsung achiever of prosperity … Skilled migrants are also good for the Budget bottom line, adding tens of millions more to tax revenue each year than they consume in government services.

He explained—and these are very interesting figures—that migrants make up a quarter of the Australian population but account for around half of our doctors, dentists, IT specialists and chefs and more than a third of our pharmacists, geologists, mechanical engineers and painters and decorators. From those statistics and those words I think we can see there is no more important economic issue for the nation’s future than appropriately targeting our skilled migration program. That is why the government has today announced that we will scrap the Migration Occupations in Demand List and replace it with a new more targeted skills occupation list to be drawn up by Skills Australia in light of the nation’s needs for skilled labour.

This is a vital economic reform, but on this vital economic reform, like on all other economic reform questions, the opposition is deeply divided. I am asked about reactions to this announcement today. Of course, before this announcement we knew that the opposition was deeply divided on climate change and economic reform issues and that has been proved yet again today in the speech by the member for Wentworth and all of his silent supporters on the opposition benches who are now too afraid to come out and support the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Before today we knew that the opposition was divided on the question of fiscal responsibility and dealing with debt and deficit.

See this speech in context