How a global energy crisis can lead to stagflation<\/a><\/p>\n As the Iran war dries up oil and gas supplies, should we prepare for stagflation?<\/p>\n He says at a time of rising inflation and weak economic growth, it is “imperative” that Australia’s governments pull all the levers they can to significantly boost productivity.<\/p>\n He says reforming our skills recognition system would help to fix chronic skills shortages in Australia’s economy and boost the supply of labour, while helping to fix our worst labour productivity growth on record.<\/p>\n “A nurse qualified in Queensland should not face a different licensing process in Western Australia,” Dr Parkinson said.<\/p>\n “An electrician licensed in Victoria should not have to start again in New South Wales.<\/p>\n “It may seem an odd analogy, but we’ve been here before \u2014 when we settled on a common rail gauge for cross-border railways. Rather than having to swap gauges and trains, we made it seamless to travel from one jurisdiction to another.<\/p>\n “Yet even today, 125 years after Federation, we still struggle with mutual recognition.<\/p>\n Martin Parkinson, former Treasury secretary, says these reforms would help to boost Australia’s record-low labour productivity growth and combat rising inflation. (Supplied)<\/p>\n “We have built a system that prevents migrants, not just those who may come in the future but those who are already here, from working at their full capacity.<\/p>\n “No matter where you sit on the size of the migration program debate, you have to recognise that a more immediate question is whether Australia is getting the economic value it should from the skilled people it has already invited here, and those it will invite in the future,” he said.<\/p>\n Dr Parkinson delivered his message at the National Press Club on Wednesday, alongside Violet Roumeliotis, the chief executive officer of Settlement Services International (SSI).<\/p>\n They took the opportunity to promote the Activate Australia’s Skills<\/a> campaign, which is an alliance of more than 100 businesses, unions and employers groups that want to reform Australia’s skills recognition system.<\/p>\n Wasting human talent on ‘industrial scale’<\/p>\n Ms Roumeliotis told the Press Club that Australia was paying the price for failing to use the “immense talent” already living in this country.<\/p>\n She said we have invited doctors, nurses, aged care workers, tradespeople, engineers and speech pathologists, among many other skilled professionals, to live in Australia as permanent migrants. \u00a0<\/p>\n But hundreds of thousands of them were not working in the jobs for which they are qualified because of slow, unfair and expensive processes to simply recognise their skills, she said.<\/p>\n Refugees’ skills still under-recognised a decade on<\/a><\/p>\n New research shows almost half of refugees previously working as managers and professionals are, 10 years later, still experiencing what’s known as an “occupational downgrade”.<\/p>\n “Right now, 44 per cent of qualified permanent migrants are working below their skill level,” Ms Roumeliotis said.<\/p>\n “That is about 620,000 people not working in their trained professions, while we have critical shortages in those same fields.<\/p>\n “There are 47,000 migrant engineers in this country working below their skill level right now, at the same time, the national shortfall of engineers has reached a decade high.<\/p>\n “There are 20,000 under-utilised teachers, when eight in 10 public schools are grappling with teacher shortages.<\/p>\n “And there are 1,300 electricians not using their skills in the middle of the worst housing crisis in a generation,” she said.<\/p>\n Ms Roumeliotis said two out of three under-utilised permanent migrants in Australia arrived through the skilled migration stream.\u00a0<\/p>\n She said those are people that Australia has actively selected and invited because we need their skills, but our systems are preventing them from putting those skills to use once they arrive.<\/p>\n “The culprit is a completely disconnected system,” she told the Press Club.\u00a0<\/p>\n “To come to Australia as a skilled migrant, you must have your qualifications and experience assessed to secure a visa. But once you arrive, those assessments count for almost nothing.\u00a0<\/p>\n “You’re forced to navigate a separate onshore process to recognise your skills and get licensed to practise. A process that totally ignores the assessments you’ve already done. It’s just ridiculous and completely inefficient.”<\/p>\n What Australia gets wrong in migration debate<\/p>\n In late 2022, the Albanese government asked Dr Parkinson to conduct a “wholesale review” of Australia’s migration system, and the final report<\/a> of that review was handed to the government in March 2023.<\/p>\n The review found Australia’s migration system was “not fit for purpose.”<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Dr Parkinson said the migration debate currently playing out in Canberra, and across Australia, was still not addressing the challenges we face as a nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1bc0c79256faffbfb6e5626f35a23ea3.jpeg\")
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