Australia is currently experiencing a massive economic boom that has seen certain states reaching unemployment levels of zero, yet the steady growth in employment has unfortunately led to a severe shortage of skilled workers, which is seriously hampering its economic growth.

Recently, large scale projects, particularly in the construction sector, have bee unable to proceed due to the lack of skilled labour in Australia. As a result, many large and influential businesses in Australia have urged the government to relax immigration laws in a bid to attract a greater number of foreign skilled workers to the country.

The lack of Australian skilled workers has affected medium and small businesses equally as much, but they lack the voice to be able to influence the government’s decisions.

As a result of the calls by major Australian companies for changes to immigration legislation, migration policies will be likely to play a significant part in the manifestos of both major political parties in the run-up to the forthcoming Australian elections.

Don Viotte, chief executive of Woodside Petroleum, one of Australia’s largest resource firms, stated: “The rest of the world are willing to trade professions and jobs a lot more freely than maybe what some of the immigration laws here allow”. Mr Viotte placed a particular emphasis on the need for relaxed laws regarding the amount of sponsorship Australian companies are allowed to offer employees, and the length of time workers can remain for.