For more than 30 years, Australia has punched well above its weight in the contest for global talent. We receive three per cent of annual global migration, despite making up just 0.3 per cent of the world’s population.
The NSW Government is working hard to support home-grown talent, providing Australians with the skills they need to get the jobs they want.
But we also need to continue attracting highly skilled workers from overseas to accelerate growth in new and emerging industries, which will boost our economy and drive jobs long into the future.
This ‘human capital’ is just as important as the physical infrastructure that our government has invested so heavily in throughout the last decade.
There is an unprecedented level of research and development being undertaken in NSW, which is unlocking enormous opportunities in industries like quantum computing, biomedical research and software engineering.
To drive these rapidly developing industries, we need highly skilled people with world-leading expertise – scientists, PhD students and innovators who have real-world experience working at the cutting-edge of new industries.
Developing a pipeline of people like that takes time, and while NSW pushes hard in promoting science, technology, engineering and mathematics in our schools, we need to fast-track skilled migration to ensure momentum in fostering these thriving industries.
NSW has proven it can rival New York, London and Silicon Valley when it comes to attracting the world’s leading innovators, but we want to significantly ramp up the battle to attract the best and brightest from abroad.
The NSW Innovation and Productivity Council’s Global Talent Wars report explores how NSW can do better when it comes to attracting the world’s best.
NSW’s spectacular natural beauty and lifestyle is an enormous drawcard, but the quality of our science, innovation and technology industries are enticing in themselves.
The report recommends better planning and promotion of NSW as a destination for global talent and calls on the Australian Government to help drive advocacy to attract the world’s best.
Australia has long fought in the top tier of the global talent contest, right up with the bigger economies of the United States and Canada.
But the next and tougher round of this global battle has begun. So now we need to lift our performance – by understanding our talent needs, working with partners, and selling NSW to the world on our merits.
Alister Henskens is the NSW Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology, and Minister for Skills and Training.
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.
Welcome to the clever country. What is the obvious answer to fire, floods and COVID, the obvious pathway to net zero 2050? Well, the first step is to grow your population by 40%, that should do it. 235,000 a year net migration is the LibLab plan.
Sure, we do attract some highly skilled people from overseas. But never be in doubt about the big Australian lie – only a small proportion of our migrants are principal applicants with scarce skills. The great majority of them are live warm bodies to crudely boost population to crudely boost GDP to make lazy politicians like Alistair Henskens look good.