ACS 'surprised' about Visa changes for IT workers, but optimistic

The CEO of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) said he was surprised that a number of IT roles were removed from the Federal Government’s Priority Migration Skilled Occupation List (PMSOL), following a direction from Home Affairs minister Clare O’Neil yesterday.

The Australian Financial Review reported on Wednesday that the ministerial direction removed 27 job roles from the PMSOL, including ICT security specialists, analyst programmers, developer programmers, software engineers and applications programmers. Prior to their removal, the ACS was listed as the authority assessing applicants’ skills in those roles.

Speaking to CRN, ACS chief executive Chris Vein said the organisation was disappointed with the decision, but remained optimistic the government will try and fix the IT skills shortage.

“Over the short term, we’re not exactly sure why the decision was made to de-prioritise technology at a time when, as the Minister has said repeatedly, that there's a crisis in Australia [in terms of] global competition and need for technology workers - cybersecurity specifically, and given all of those needs, again, is a surprise,” Vein said.

“But we're optimistic because in the medium and long term, [O’Neil] is going to be trying to fix the problem.”

When asked about how the changes would impact the ACS’s revenue prospects as the assessing authority, Vein argued that the issue is bigger than any organisation involved in the assessment process of people's credentials as they make their application for a visa.

“The issue isn’t me saying I’m disappointed because there's a potential loss of income. I think the issue really is that the need for technology workers - highly skilled technology workers - in this country is only going to grow,” he said.

“The fact is that Australia is a nice place to work and a great place to come. It's got a great reputation, so people want to come here. So the issue really isn't about who gets paid - the issue is the challenge is going to remain that a lot of people are going to be wanting to come here.

“The demand for visas is only going to increase at the same time that they've been de-prioritised. So, what that effectively could mean is that you'll just have more and more and more people in the backlog waiting to come in. And that doesn't have anything to do with anybody who's doing assessments. It’s just the issue that eventually all those people are going to come in or need to come in. And so how is that going to be managed?”

The AFR reported O’Neil saying that her direction aimed to streamline the system so all applicants would be better off as waiting times would improve. She said that previous ministerial direction prioritised so many occupations and sectors that it was adding up to 45 minutes of extra processing time for each application.

Vein added that while the ACS doesn’t understand the change, he was looking forward to seeing processing times improves, if that is the result.

Citing ACS research, Vein said the lack of skilled workers in the IT industry would potentially negatively affect the economy, especially if Australia only relies on the two traditional pathways to filling the shortage - migration and domestic creation of talent by educational institutions.

“What we're now arguing as a third pathway is, how do we actually take people who are interested in moving into the technology space, who may be working in adjacent industries or even completely different industries? How do we reskill, upskill or skill just overall, those people and get them into the workforce? Because we know that domestically, we're just not producing enough through the educational system,” he said.

“Traditionally, we make up the difference through immigration, but given [Australia’s] needs, even that is going to be difficult. So how do we then re-skill or skill other people, other professions or people in professions already in Australia to address the deficit?”