Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a question for the Minister for Home Affairs. To respond to the housing crisis, we need more construction workers and tradies to build more homes, but the building industry recruited only half of the additional workers it needed in the first half of this year. The government has proposed a fast-tracked specialist skills pathway for skilled migrants. Given this housing crisis, why have you specifically excluded construction workers?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Curtin for the question. In terms of the different priorities that we have in managing the migration program, the principle should always be that our migration program, particularly the skills stream, needs to be tailored to the needs of the nation, and there is a very clear need of the nation at the moment with respect to the building of houses. I'm alarmed when I hear some of the comments that come from those opposite, where they seem to be willing to cut the numbers, including cutting numbers of people who would in fact be involved in building houses, as somehow trying to help deal with a challenge in having enough houses.

The legislation that's before the parliament creates a number of different priority pathways. There is one that will largely be used by IT workers, where there's a threshold of over 135,000. It's a specialist skills pathway that trades are not part of, and that's the one that the member for Curtin refers to. The core skills pathway, though, does include trades if they are listed on the core skills occupation list, and I'll be making decisions on the core skills occupation list soon. The draft list that was put out, which I can refer to because it was put out as a draft list and is public, did include the various occupations: electricians, carpenters and joiners, plumbers, roof tilers.

Making sure that we have enough people to be able to build homes is a critical role of the immigration system, and the member for Curtin is right when she says we haven't been able to get the number of people that industry want to get at the moment—that's true. It's also true that last year the number of skilled construction workers who were granted visas was 10,000, and that was the highest number in a decade. So, in terms of the government trying to turn the system around to respond to the crisis in making sure that we've got enough workers in construction, that is being done. I have had the member for Curtin and other members of the crossbench raise with me this exact issue that for all the skills priorities, there is a big public interest right now in making sure that we get the people we need to build the houses that we need. The government agrees with that, and the core skills pathway should be able to do that.