By Tom Williams
Science and technology industry bodies say Australia has problems attracting and retaining STEM talent
Australia “cannot met” its needs for technology workers and skills without supporting skilled migration, science and technology industry bodies told a parliamentary inquiry on Friday.
The nation is experiencing significant problems attracting and retaining critical technology talent in areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and energy, the parliamentary inquiry into the value of skilled migration heard.
Manager of the Australian Institute for Machine Learning and policy chair of industry body Science and Technology Australia, Dr Kathy Nicholson told the hearing that migrants in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) are “essential to Australia’s productivity” amid “an acute shortage across the STEM workforce”.
This gap is increasing as Australia’s domestic STEM pipeline shows “real signs of strain”, suggested Nicholson, who referred to recent high school test results which returned Australia’s lowest maths scores on record.
“This combination – a shrinking domestic pipeline, and rising STEM demands from priorities like artificial intelligence, [defence partnership] AUKUS, cyber[security], quantum, and net zero – means Australia cannot meet its own workforce needs without migration,” Nicholson said.
Slow and opaque visa processes are the top concern in attracting and retaining AI talent, she added, reflecting similar evidence heard by the committee in August.
“It takes me about 18 months to get a visa for one of these people,” Nicholson said
“That’s 18 months where in many cases they get offered other jobs in the meantime, and don’t end up coming [to Australia].”
A Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and a migrant himself, Emeritus Professor Chennupati Jagadish told the committee it is “very important” to attract, train, and retain skilled workers, “particularly in critical technology areas”.
“I’ve lost many students to the UK, and Japan, and the US, because our visa processing took too long, and I’ve lost lots of postdoctoral fellows – again to other countries – because we have taken too long,” he said.
Attracting and retaining technology and science talent has also been made more difficult by Australia’s often lower tech salaries and lower investment in research and development (R&D) than other comparable nations, the committee heard.
Science and Technology Australia CEO Ryan Winn said, “We have amazing people who want to come to Australia and work here, but we have uncertainty about the speed of visas, the uncertainty of whether they can bring their families, and the uncertainty when they come here of the funding for their research.”
