Australia is confronting its weakest decade of productivity growth in 60 years, slow growth, and acute skill shortages across every major sector. Skilled migration has been one of Australia’s most effective levers for boosting economic performance. Skilled migrants help lift labour productivity, deepen our national skills base and strengthen fiscal sustainability. OECD analysis shows that regions with higher migrant shares enjoy higher wages and stronger labour productivity for native-born workers. In this context, skilled migration is not a peripheral policy — it is one of Australia’s most powerful and proven levers for lifting productivity, expanding workforce capacity and supporting long-term economic growth.
Skilled migration complements, rather than replaces, local workers and apprentices by filling critical gaps that otherwise constrain business growth and service delivery. While training Australians must remain the priority, skills are not being built quickly enough to meet current demand. Skilled migrants bring the expertise needed to build future industries, are central to delivering essential services, strengthening regional communities and supporting the research and education systems that underpin long-term national prosperity.
The BCA strongly supports the Government’s Migration Strategy and welcomes recent reforms to modernise skilled migration. However, further action is needed to ensure Australia’s migration is strategically targeted, efficient and globally competitive. In particular, Australia needs a more predictable and economically grounded approach to permanent migration, stronger prioritisation of high-value visa streams, and faster, more reliable system delivery.
In this submission, we outline practical, workable reforms to:
- Establish migration settings within a Population Plan that provides long-term certainty and aligns migration with workforce needs, demographic change, housing and infrastructure delivery
- Strengthen the permanent skilled migration program by prioritising Employer Sponsored visas as the highest-value component
- Recognise international education as a priority growth industry and support the sustainable expansion of the international student market
- Complete and implement key elements of the Migration Strategy, including the Essential Skills Pathway, reform of the points test and labour market testing
- Improve Australia’s competitiveness for global talent through faster visa processing, streamlined skills recognition and more efficient pathways.
Together, these reforms will help ensure Australia has the skilled workforce needed to lift productivity, sustain economic growth and support strong, resilient communities.