State Skills reduced allocations
Article from WA media
Commonwealth cut skilled migrant visa numbers by 70 per ccent
WA Premier Roger Cook has pleaded with the Federal government to reverse its decision to trim the intake of overseas skills workers.
Premier Roger Cook said the Federal government's decision to reduce Western Australia's skilled migrant visa allocation was a failure.
"The fact that the Federal government would slash our numbers simply does not make sense," Mr Cook said.
"Previously we asked for 12,000 last year, we got 8000.
"We secured those workers inside the third quarter of the year.
"This year we asked for another 10,000 and we got an allocation of just over 2000 - that's not good enough.
Mr Cook recently wrote to the Commonwealth government, pleading for it to reconsider plans to drastically cut the intake of overseas skilled workers, that are required to feed WA's booming economy and keep powering the nation for the benefit of all Australians.
At a press conference in Albany on Friday, he said the reduction in skilled migrants would not just affect regional WA, suggesting "it will harm the whole of the State.
"We know that we are a State that is economically prosperous at the moment, our economy is growing faster than any other in the country.
"What we need today is workers, particularly housing workers to work in our construction industry, to work in our mining industry.
"We need to make sure that we can secure the labour that we need to continue to grow our economy and the Federal government needs to do its heavy lifting as well to make sure we can do that."
The Nationals WA leader Shane Love, who is also the opposition leader, also called on the Federal government to explain and reverse its reported decision to reduce WA's nominated skilled migrant intake by 70 per cent."
WA is reliant on a skilled migrant work force and any decision by the Federal Labor government to cut our State's intake is completely misguided and ignorant to the needs of WA," Mr Love said.
"WA is the economic powerhouse of the country and this decision by the Federal Labor government undermines the workforce of this State.
"Our State is gripped by critical worker shortages across a number of sectors, including health and housing, and now is not the time to decrease the number of skilled workers coming in."
The Nationals WA leader Shane Love, who is also the opposition leader, also called on the Federal government to explain and reverse its reported decision to reduce WA's nominated skilled migrant intake.
The Moore MLA said the decision was another sign that Labor does not understand the needs of WA and that a WA Labor Premier is unable to make any headway with his Federal colleagues in Canberra.
"WA doesn't need an embassy, we need the 14 Federal government members to prove they are up to the job our State elected them to do," he said.
"The Premier himself told Western Australians his Federal Labor colleagues weren't representing our interests in Canberra - this is proof.
"The Federal government needs to explain how they have come to this unexpected decision and the rationale behind compromising WA's future work force at such a critical time for our economy.
"A cynic would say the only possible reason for this decision is to set up a 'win' for the beleaguered Premier Cook when this irrational, and frankly bizarre, decision is surely overturned."
Mr Love will be writing to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, imploring him to re-examine the fundamentally flawed decision.
Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs Minister Brendan Giles said his government inherited a system with backlog after backlog, delays and waitlists and were working on reviewing the migration system.
"We haven't wasted a day in cleaning up the mess left by the Liberals over a decade of neglect, including the pile of one million visas sitting in the in-tray when we came to government," Mr Giles said.
"They failed to plan for the borders reopening - even though it was clear that we would need skilled migrants when the borders reopened."
He said they were getting the system moving again and reducing the waitlist.
"The backlog is nearly half and despite record demand, visas are being processed efficiently because of our $50 million investment in the system in the budget," Mr Giles said.
"The government is engaging in a recalibration of our migration system through the migration review, and will continue to work with State and territory partners to ensure that we have all the policy settings right to ensure skills shortages across the country are addressed."
(Source: Farm Weekly Media)