Australian Migration: Why Business Leaders Say Skills Matter More Than the Headline Number

News · 2026-08-20 · 4 min read

Australia's migration debate keeps returning to a single figure. Should net overseas migration settle at 245,000? Should the permanent intake fall to 130,000, as One Nation has proposed? Should it be linked, as the Coalition suggests, to the pace of house building? The numbers move, yet the argument stays the same: more migrants or fewer, as though one dial decides what really matters for the economy.

Business owners who rely on migration see it differently. For them, the key issue is not "how many" but "who", and in particular, which industries those workers go into. Here is a structured look at what they are saying.

Sectors That Rely on Visa Holders

Aged Care

Esha Oberoi, co-founder of Leora Healthcare, runs a company with roughly 800 staff. She says nearly half of her workforce holds a visa, and she estimates that about one in six aged care workers across Australia are migrants.

Demand is set to rise steeply. Within a decade, Australia is expected to add close to 1.5 million people aged over 65 to the aged care system, and that change will call for hundreds of thousands of extra aged care workers. Local hiring alone is unlikely to fill the gap, because shift-based care is physically and emotionally tough and few domestic workers are queuing up for it.

Construction

Metricon CEO Brad Duggan notes that whole trades, such as plastering and rendering, have largely been developed by particular migrant communities over the years. They filled gaps left behind when a generation was steered towards university degrees. Although new home inquiries have dropped sharply this year, Duggan says the limit on housing supply is not migrant labour. It is the lack of skilled tradespeople prepared to do the work at all.

A Pipeline Problem Created at Home

Duggan's comments point to an awkward contradiction. For a generation, Australia pushed school leavers into tertiary study as the only reliable route to a secure career. In doing so, it weakened the trades pipeline, and migration has since had to make up the shortfall. If that is correct, then tightening the visa system without fixing the underlying skills pipeline does not solve anything. It simply takes away the workaround.

Calls for Better Targeting, Not Open Borders

Some of the strongest opponents of a blunt cut are not asking for open borders. They want sharper selection.

Ruslan Kogan, founder of Kogan.com, came to Melbourne from Belarus as a child in 1989. He treats the issue as workforce planning rather than immigration: work out which skills the country will need, such as doctors, engineers, electricians and scientists, and make the pathway easier for exactly those people instead of arguing over an abstract cap.
Flight Centre's Graham Turner leads a business less exposed to migration policy than most, yet he reaches a similar conclusion by another route. With population growth slowing across the developed world, he sees migration as the main lever for national growth. In his view, the real risk is not the total number of arrivals but whether the system is set up to bring in people who are equipped, and willing, to contribute economically.

Reading the Signals as a Skilled Applicant

Look closely at this debate and a clear pattern appears. Policymakers from very different parts of the political spectrum are moving towards the view that Australia's migration system should work more like a targeted recruitment tool and less like a tap that is simply turned up or down.

For skilled workers considering Australia, especially in aged care, healthcare, construction trades and engineering, this shared direction is worth noting:

Demand in these sectors will remain wherever the headline NOM figure ends up.
A skills-based system is, if anything, more likely to favour applicants who can show a clear, in-demand trade or qualification than a system that just rations places.

Next Steps for Workers in Pakistan and Beyond

If you are exploring jobs in Australia for Pakistanis or for skilled workers from any country, focus on the strength of your trade or qualification rather than on the political numbers. Keep an English CV that sets out your skills clearly, take an English test (IELTS or PTE) if your visa or employer requires one, and complete Pakistan's emigration formalities, such as registration with the Protector of Emigrants, before you travel.

The figure that dominates the headlines may matter far less than whether you meet the skills criteria employers are looking for.

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