The backlog of skilled worker visas is a “hopeless situation”, but the government is working as fast as it can to get them processed, the prime minister says.
As businesses across multiple industries indicate they’re being hampered by skills shortages, it’s estimated more than 100,000 overseas workers remain for visa processing.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said while additional staff had been brought in to deal with the large backlog, more needed to be done.
“It’s a hopeless situation that we inherited. We have put considerable resources into the additional staff to get these visas processed,” he told Sydney radio 2GB on Wednesday.
“How frustrating is it that there are people who want to come here who’ve been waiting in the queue, some for more than a year, but their visa can’t be processed.”
The government has indicated it is considering raising the cap on skilled migration in order to solve workplace shortages across several key industries.
While the current cap sits at 160,000, there are talks it could be lifted to 180,000 or even 200,000.
Shortages of skilled workers from overseas, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, are set to be among the areas of discussion at the government’s jobs and skills summit, set to take place across two days next week.
Albanese said while there had been a large backlog, there was movement on the issue.
“We’re working as fast as we can to deal with this,” he said.
“Of course, with visas, you do have to have checks, you can’t just have open borders, so they do need to be processed, but we’re working as quickly as we possibly can.”
The prime minister indicated cuts to the public service by the previous government had led to a lack of resources for processing visas.
Albanese said how skilled workers were brought into the country to fill vacancies also needed to be examined.
“We bring in temporary migrants in areas where there are skill shortages, and then we get rid of them, and then we get new temporary migrants in to fill those same jobs, that to me doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
