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Business plea for migrants

BUSINESS leaders have urged Prime Minister John Howard to deliver a dramatic increase in skilled migration by boosting the annual intake to 180,000 over the next five years, to help clear the capacity bottlenecks which have driven up interest rates.

Boral chief executive Rod Pearse said it was "quite reasonable" for the Government to lift the intake to 180,000.

Should consider increases across all migration categories - skilled, unskilled and guest workers on temporary visas.

"Guest workers is an idea worth studying and it's an idea that the Government is looking at," Mr Pearse said.

The Boral chief's comments came as the Prime Minister told the Business Council of Australia that the Government planned a major focus on addressing skill shortages.

Mr Howard used a keynote speech to the BCA, which represents Australia's topflight companies, to outline a more aggressive approach on skills development.

He also endorsed a sharp jump in skilled migration places.

"I am in favour. I am in favour of adjusting our migration programme according to economic need," he told a Sydney radio station. "We have an economic need at the moment for more skilled people. You can't generate them out of thin air in Australia.

"(And if) part of the solution to that problem is to bring in more skilled migrants then I am in favour of it."

The migration plan will be considered by cabinet in the next few weeks. The plan is for a rise in total migration places to about 140,000 - the biggest number in nearly two decades.

Business has been urging the Government for months to use increased migration as one tool to deal with the skills shortages which are driving up the costs of production.

Unpublished data from the mining sector shows job vacancies have more than doubled in the past four years.

And research that the West Australian mining industry has commissioned from the National Institute of Labour Studies confirms there are substantial vacancies across all the major trades.

"The economy has now hit the point where the Government has added to the demand side... and really it's on the supply side that we are running out of capacity," Mr Pearse said.

"There is a short-term cyclical issue and a longer term structural problem. We need to de-bottleneck Australia's ageing demographics."

Peter Watson; chief executive of industrial services company Transfield Services, said higher levels of skilled immigration would be the key if Australia is to successfully expand its overstretched infrastructure.