Population growth challenge needs to combat skill shortages, says property expert

“If we put ourselves in the position of someone not living in Australia and travelling here; to them, Sydney is the highest profile, so that’s where a lot of people come to,” Mr Pressley said to Smart Property Investment.

“The last official population data from the ABS, Sydney’s population grew by 101,000 in 2017 and 84,000 of that was from overseas. But that’s always been the case.

“Sydney’s always attracted more overseas migration than anywhere else and Melbourne’s not that far behind it.”

To address this issue, Mr Pressley believes in a policy that focuses on distribution, rather than just focusing on which locations need filling.

“I think it would actually be sensible to have a policy that says whatever amount we let in each year, we’re still going to have a policy that determines where that’s going to be distributed to rather than just, ‘let’s let everyone come here,’ because it’s actually created lots of problems in this country,” Mr Pressley said.

“It’s created infrastructure challenges, it’s created housing affordability challenges, it’s created a lack of productivity due to congestion around the place.”

He said that Australia needs to keep encouraging skills from other countries to enter the country, as there are locations that have available jobs, but there is a lack of trained potential employees living locally.

“To me, a sensible migration policy would be to match up someone from another country who wants to come here with; ‘What are your skills?’ and here’s a list of half a dozen places where Australia actually needs those skills today.”

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