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Regional centres could miss out on attracting skilled migrant workers following changes to South Australia's General Skilled Migration (GSM) scheme.
Key points:
- South Australia's General Skilled Migration program has been reduced to 2,300 places
- Long-term resident, outer regional and high performance graduate streams have all been scrapped
- Regions fear they may miss out on attracting skilled migrants to plug labour gaps
The GSM program for 2023-24, which opened in late September, is designed to attract skilled workers to fill labour shortages, offering several pathways or streams towards achieving permanent residency.
The state government removed three streams from the program after the federal government significantly reduced the number of state nominations from 8,800 to 2,300.
The outer regional stream was among the axed pathways, which means migrants are no longer incentivised to work in a rural setting.
Under the previous program, migrants could opt to work six months in a rural area or 18 months within South Australia.
However, now migrants are eligible for permanent residency after working anywhere in South Australia for six months.
Regional Development Australia Eyre Peninsula chief executive Ryan Viney said the changes could have a "compounding effect on the existing labour shortage".
"Naturally any change could reduce the amount of skilled migrants moving to regional locations to address long-term job vacancies," Mr Viney said.
"Workforce attraction and retention is critical to the region's economic prosperity, and skilled migrants are a key component to solving long-term job vacancies in regional locations."
Skills shortage at critical lows
Gadaleta Steel Fabrication managing director Sam Gadaleta currently employs about 10 people who are on various work visas.
Mr Gadaleta said skilled migrants were essential to his Whyalla and Port Pirie-based fabrication sites and the changes could have a severe impact on his business.
"Without skilled workers, we've got no business," Mr Gadaleta said.
"There's a reason why we go offshore -- there's just no availability here in Australia.
"It's just getting worse. Now it's a crisis point where we have no options."
Over the past 15 years, Mr Gadaleta has helped several skilled migrants gain permanent residency, with about 20 staying in the region after obtaining it.
Mr Gadaleta said those who were looking for somewhere to bring their families were more likely to stay.
"Once they've got their family over here they're actually settled," he said.
"The idea of chasing every single cent is probably not the main driver for them.
"It's mainly to get their kids into school – getting with the community."
Bambrick Legal senior associate Amanda Tsui mirrored Mr Gadaleta's sentiments and said about 50 per cent of the clients she had helped to obtain their permanent residency stayed in the rural centre they had worked in.
"Those who are just there for the experience to get the permanent residency tend to move," Ms Tsui said.
"Usually the ones who, in outer regional who are married, who have children and you're part of the community, those ones stay."
SA Department for Industry, Innovation and Science director of strategic policy and migration, Louisa Newstead, said one of the key objectives of the GSM was to incentivise skilled migrants to the regions.
She said the department was surprised at the significant reduction of state nominations and was forced to cut three "specialist" streams, including the outer regional stream.
"We introduced those during the pandemic and kept them in place immediately after the pandemic as well," she said.
"We felt that they were necessary to help support South Australian businesses facing the extreme skill shortages.
"If the situation changes next year, and we have more places allocated, then absolutely, we'd look to re-introduce that."
A spokesperson from the Department of Home Affairs said the Australian government had reduced the number of allocations because it had enough "applications on hand to meet the migration planning levels".
"Limiting the number of new applications that flow into the on-hand pipeline is an important lever to stop backlogs emerging and prevent processing delays for visa applicants," the spokesperson said.