00:00Antonio Michel was a specialist trauma physio in Chile for 10 years. In Australia he's starting
00:09from scratch.
00:10I spent a lot of time with people in rural areas that were waiting for months to get
00:15a private physiotherapy appointment and at the same time I was sweeping flooring construction
00:20sites.
00:21The 38-year-old is fronting a new alliance of 50 business groups and unions urging the
00:27government to streamline skills recognition schemes.
00:30Dentists and doctors driving rideshare, of engineers and electricians stacking shelves.
00:38The group's research found 44% of skilled migrants who come to Australia are working
00:43below their ability. Two thirds of those people came on the federal government's skilled
00:49migration program.
00:50We know that we have huge untapped potential in Australia's overseas trained workers.
00:56The building industry is short 90,000 people at a time where the government is desperately
01:01trying to boost housing supply. The alliance says construction workers are being brought
01:06in on skilled visas but struggle to transfer their qualifications.
01:12Skills Minister Andrew Giles says the government's already spending $1.8 million to streamline
01:18skills assessments for 1,900 construction workers.
01:22There's regulatory bottlenecks and there's different approaches to licensing and quality
01:26in the different states and territories.
01:29Businesses and unions want the federal government to appoint an ombudsman to oversee the dozens
01:34of industry groups that are registering overseas workers to cut red tape and to make it easier
01:40for skilled migrants to fill vacancies.
01:43It's also about the skilled worker coming in on the right visa at the right time to
01:48link with the right job and that's where this government has failed.
01:53With a third of occupations facing workforce shortages, industries say migrants are the
01:59only solution.
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