What's going on?, page-102

As per the AFR this morning:

The hottest topic in corporate Australia is not interest rates, inflation, energy prices or the softening consumer. It’s migration.

We’ll hear plenty about migration at the upcoming reporting season; it is boosting retailers’ sales, increasing landlords’ ability to collect rent, helping miners and contractors find staff, bolstering the big four banks’ customer numbers, lifting pathology providers’ testing volumes, filling up Macquarie’s IT department. You name it, chief executives are talking about it.

For a lot of them, migration is the new growth. It is the quickest and most logical way to overcome the tight jobs market, find skilled labour, grow sales at mature businesses such as Woolworths and Coles, restock accounting and legal functions, and ultimately make more money for shareholders.For the government, it’s a way to build Australia’s prosperity. The country can import young, skilled workers to help lift productivity, increase the working-age population, and counterbalance Australia’s ageing population. It released a 195-page review of the migration system last month, timely because the borders are open and Australia is finding it hard to get workers.On releasing the review, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neill said Australia’s migration system was broken. “It is failing our businesses, it is failing migrants themselves. And most importantly, it is failing Australians,” she said.