Jaimee Rogers:
So joining us now to help us pull this all apart is Institute of Public Affairs Research Fellow, Saxon Davidson. Saxon, welcome. Your analysis shows only one in three places in Australia’s migration programme actually go to the skilled worker, with the rest going to the family. Has the government been misleading Australians about what a skilled migration programme really is?
Saxon Davidson:
I believe so, yes. And they’ve been doing it for quite a long time. As you just said, there are 185,000 permanent visas granted, and of that, about 71% are given under the skilled visa programme. But only 60,000 of the total 185,000, total permanent visas, are actually skilled migrants. Now, no one is suggesting that we have a family separation policy when it comes to our migration policy. That’s absurd. But the government should at least be honest about what our skilled migration programme actually is, particularly when we are having a record net overseas migration programme under this Albanese government.
Jaimee Rogers:
We definitely don’t want to split families, but does this build a stronger case for the government to tighten eligibility for second applicants, or as a way to overall reduce the migrant intake?
Saxon Davidson:
I certainly do think so on both of those accounts, particularly on the reduction of migration. Because we’re having large stress on the economy when it comes to construction of homes, a housing shortage crisis, a rental shortage crisis. And the migration programme isn’t fixing the problem that this Albanese government specifically said that it would.
Back in ’22, ’23, the Albanese government stated that we needed a refix of our migration programme, which actually just meant to increase it in order to fix our worker shortage problem that arose from the pandemic. But that worker shortage crisis has only continued and has now become the norm, and migration numbers remain elevated. So absolutely we need a reduction in immigration, and we need to rethink about how we actually go about in solving our worker shortage crisis.
Jaimee Rogers:
One thing that I found really interesting in this Daily Telegraph analysis was the skilled occupation list now including more than 450 different roles, and now obviously you would expect to see things like doctors and engineers. But now there’s things like actors and interior designers. In your opinion, has the definition of skills shortage become just so broad that the programme is no longer serving Australia’s economic interests?
Saxon Davidson:
Well, without a doubt. What people commonly think as skilled migrants with skills isn’t always aligned with what the government considers to be a skill, and that obviously reflects in what occurs with our skilled migration programme. Everyone thinks that being a doctor, or being a nurse, or having an engineering degree is clearly a skill. But clearly, this migration programme, this skilled migration programme is not designed for the needs of the economy.
If the government’s argument is that we need workers to help fix our housing shortage and that’s why we have a migration programme, then you would expect the vast majority of those migrants to come with skills in things such as manufacturing or construction, but this is simply not the case. And so you’re actually having the added demand stress of housing and rentals being applied with the excuse that this is going to improve supply, and it’s simply not true.
Jaimee Rogers:
Saxon, I want to go back to the job vacancies level that you were just talking about, because you did some research around this. But more so about the high level that we’re seeing where we’re around that 45% higher than pre-pandemic levels. But what does that tell you about the government when they’re constantly talking about migration, but it’s not actually filling these worker shortages? And what’s the way that you think we should be approaching this instead?
Saxon Davidson:
So the IPA does regular analysis on job vacancies, and it’s found that worker shortages have been above around 325,000 job vacancies for the last five years. And this costs the taxpayer in terms of lost income, and lost income tax to the government as well. But in terms of what we should be doing instead, the IPA has long held the position that we really need to look at the tax code that we apply to Australian veterans, Australian students on the youth allowance, as well as Australian pensioners who face tax rates as high as 66% due to lost benefits, and to regular income tax brackets when they work about a day and a half on minimum wage for a week.
Our research has found that this will increase the labour market by about 520,000 workers. And also, these are skilled workers that live in Australia, particularly our veterans and our pensioners who also shouldn’t be taxed at such a high rate for wanting to stay a part of their community. And then also, this help fixes job vacancies in unskilled areas of the economy when it comes to students who desperately need that experience in order to put forward in life once their studies are done. These are easy tax changes that we can make that are cost-effective and add output into the economy and puts more workers into the economy, while also increasing the amount of people paying income tax for the federal government. But instead, the government have continued with this failed migration programme that has simply been unable to fix the worker shortage crisis as shown with the elevated levels that we have seen.
Jaimee Rogers:
Well, Saxon, thank you for your time tonight.
This transcript of Saxon Davidson speaking on Credlin Sky News Australia from 7 July 2026 has been edited for clarity.
