Although they weren’t on the official list of invitees, Jim Chalmers posed for pictures at the Jobs and Skills Summit with a number of backbench Labor MPs.
When the prime minister was away, the Treasurer asked backbenchers to fill Anthony Albanese’s seat, including the MP for Higgins Michelle Ananda-Rajah, the MP for Hunter Dan Repacholi, the MP for Swan Zaneta Mascarenhas, and the MP for Bruce Julian Hill.
To let their supporters know what they were up to in Canberra, all of the backbenchers shared pictures of their quick conversation with the Treasurer on social media.
The nearly identical photos sparked rumours that Dr. Chalmers is mending fences with backbenchers in preparation for one day enlisting their support to lead Labor.
The identical photos, according to the Australian newspaper’s associate editor Nick Tabakoff, are unmistakable evidence that Dr. Chalmers aspires to become prime minister.
It was a “masterclass in both social media spin and caucus management,” he wrote. “These are two things dear to any future leadership aspirant.”
According to Labor, the summit on Thursday and Friday produced a number of important results, the most important of which was the raising of the annual target for permanent migration to 195,000 people.
Just a few months prior to the emergence of COVID-19, that level was reduced by 15% to 160,000 in an effort to reduce urban congestion.
Australia’s unemployment rate is currently 3.4%, which is close to a 50-year low, but labour shortages have fueled skyrocketing inflation that has lowered real wages.
“Covid is handing us a chance to change our immigration system that we will never get back,” says Covid. Clare O’Neil, the minister of home affairs, said at the summit, “I want us to take that chance.”
Tony Burke, the employment minister, identified problems with the Fair Work Act that he hoped to fix right away.
These included facilitating easier access to flexible work schedules and unpaid parental leave so that families could divide up work and childcare duties.
What was said during the summit?
1. Accelerated delivery of 465,000 fee-free TAFE places and an additional $1 billion in joint Federal-State funding for fee-free TAFE in 2023;
2. A one-time income credit that allows Age Pensioners who choose to work to earn an extra $4,000 throughout the course of this fiscal year without affecting their pension;
3. Using the $575 million in the National Homes Infrastructure Facility more flexibly to invest in social and affordable housing while securing funding from private sources such as superannuation funds;
4. Modernizing Australia’s workplace relations rules, notably by ensuring that all enterprises and employees may participate in negotiations;
5. Modifying the Fair Work Act to reinforce protections against harassment and discrimination for employees and to increase access to flexible working arrangements;
6. Increasing women’s, First Nations’, regional Australians’, and people of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds’ access to jobs and training pathways, including equity targets for training places, 1,000 digital apprenticeships in the Australian Public Service, and other measures to lower employment barriers;
7. A 195,000 person cap on permanent migrants in 2022–2023 to cope with the significant lack of vital workers; and
8. Extending visas to overseas students, easing limits on their employment, and giving more resources to clear the backlog of visas in order to improve the supply of talented workers.
The “better off overall” measure has to be “simple, adaptable, and equitable,” according to Mr. Burke.
In order to address challenges in the construction sector, such as mental health and safety concerns, the government has committed to creating a forum to bring together unions, corporations, and the government.
Australian Council of Trade Unions head Sally McManus claimed that in addition to enterprise bargaining, the nation needed new, contemporary options, such as multi-employer or sector-wide bargaining, to move wages.
Tim Reed, president of the Business Council of Australia, reaffirmed the group’s determination to concentrate on addressing negotiating at the company level.
“We need to continually obtain productivity increases,” he continued, “if we genuinely want to see real wages increasing on a sustainable basis.”
In the meanwhile, a committee has been formed to bring together the government, unions, and the agricultural industry in an effort to address the dilemma of a labour shortage.
Murray Watt, the minister of agriculture, announced the partnership’s formation on Friday. It will start moving some of the agreements from the jobs and skills summit forward to make sure the sector receives its “due share.”
In order to address the difficulties facing the industry, Senator Watt said it was crucial to carry on the summit’s cooperative attitude.
According to him, “(this will ensure that) agriculture workers are protected and respected in their work and that farmers can get the workers they need.”
Fiona Simson, president of the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF), praised the government for its collaborative approach but asserted that the needs of the industry wouldn’t be met by the additional 9,000 regional positions included in the lifting of the permanent skilled migration cap.
It’s not (enough), but we must continue to concentrate on the results, she added.
Dr Chalmers ruled out pushing forward the government’s trademark childcare scheme from mid-2023 to encourage women into the workforce sooner, after gender equality in the workforce was spotlighted on the first day.
According to him, the untapped economic potential of Australian women, who would work harder and earn more money if we made it simpler for them to do so, was one of the major topics of the employment summit.
The fact is that we cannot afford to support some of these ideas sooner than we can, therefore it will instead start in July as planned.