‘Prioritising dog groomers': Anthony Albanese panned for expanding immigration system, and increasing spending to boost economic growth
As the government prepares to address productivity head-on through its economic roundtable, its migration program has again come under fire.
Labor is facing accusations of papering over Australia's flagging economy with rapidly boosting the net-migration rate.
Net permanent and long-term immigration arrivals reached record levels in the year ending in April 2024, with the net intake in April 2025 also coming in at the highest ever on record at 24,660.
This represents a 24 per cent year-on year increase despite the government vowing to substantially reduce permanent migration numbers prior to the May 3 election.
In addition, the government's skilled migration cohort prioritises positions such as yoga instructors and martial artists at a similar level of importance as bricklayers, carpenters and plumbers.
Tradies had previously been placed behind professions like dog handlers and jewellery designers on the draft "core skills" occupations list.
Yoga instructors and martial arts teachers will remain on the list of about 450 professions.
Nationals' leader David Littleproud savaged the government's strategy and said that raising immigration and government spending would not solve the nations historic productivity slump.
'The workforce which the government is putting in is competing with private sector employment, and the only way the governments has tried to fix is that is by pouring more people into this country," Mr Littleproud told Sky News.
'(The government) is prioritising dog groomers and martial arts instructors rather than those that would add to productivity and grow the pie.
'We have a housing crisis that state and local governments need to lean into and this where some hard decisions need to be made."
In a major blow to the government's economic agenda the RBA on Tuesday downgraded its medium-term productivity assumption to just 0.7 per cent year-on-year down from its previous assumption of one per cent.
It also warned Australia's economy was incapable of growing faster than two per cent over its forecasts.
Despite Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledging to take steps to reduce both permanent and net overseas migration, it was revealed in early August that the government would move to increase the number of international student placements by 25,000 to 295,000 for 2026.
Public sector employment under the Albanese government has also reached record highs, with new figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in June showing the nation now had a million a bureaucrats.
The federal bureaucracy alone has ballooned to a record-breaking 213,000 staff, up from a 14-year low of 144,704 workers at the end of 2019.
The government also faced intense scrutiny after quietly lowering the English language threshold for visa applicants, with the pass mark for the Pearson Test of English (PTE) being dropped from 30 out of 90 to 24.
Mr Littleproud said the government needed to 'be honest about spending' and that bipartisan conversations needed to be had about reigning in federal expenditure.
'There are some bipartisan things we need to look at, the NDIS, we are going to need to have some honest conversations about getting back to first principals on what it was originated for, those that are most in need,' he said.
'We are also going to need to have those conversations about taxation and increasing tax, we need to have a broader conversation about what our tax takes should be.
However, he did not explicitly state which taxes the government should look at amending.
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