Luke Grant speaks with Abul Rizvi, Former deputy secretary of the Department of Immigration & author of “Population Shock”, about many business leaders calling for a clear and present increase in immigration numbers.

Mr Rizvi has written about the Skilled Independent category, a highly discretionary category that governments have used to crank up immigration levels, either to address skill shortages or, over the longer term, to slow the rate of population ageing.

He says this is also used as a swing category to deliver the migration program when there is insufficient demand from employer-sponsored migration — as is likely to be the case now following changes made in 2017-18.

He notes that places in the Skilled Independent category have been steadily reduced since 2013-14 when 44,984 Skilled Independent visas were granted to a planned low of 6,500 Skilled Independent visas in 2021-22.

But what happens when the world has demands for all the skilled places we need and should the government sponsor trade education places like at TAFEs or remain stuck with only university places?

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