The industrial and commercial community has urged the federal government to relax restrictions on skilled immigrants to accelerate infrastructure construction without incurring cost overruns. After RBA President Philip Lowe said the government could do more in infrastructure investment, Peter Burn, head of policy at the Australian Industry Group (AIG), said that by accepting more skilled immigrants, more infrastructure could be built faster. .
Prime Minister Morrison warned on Thursday that capacity constraints have led to cost overruns, and he mentioned the increase in the cost of Victoria’s Monash high-speed expansion project by 360 million. Victorian Prime Minister Andrews said in June that there was not enough gravel and cement to handle another large project. Anthony Walker of Standard & Poor’s Ratings said the government had the opportunity to borrow more debt without affecting the credit rating, as both NSW and Victoria’s budgets have recovered.
However, Standard & Poor’s also agrees that the Prime Minister is facing the risk of rising costs for large-scale infrastructure projects because they are competing for materials and labor. Federal Infrastructure Minister Alan Tudge said the government is open to introducing more overseas workers, but skills shortages usually occur at the middle and top management levels. Skilled immigrants are capped at 70,000 a year, and the total number of immigrants per year is 160,000.
