Australia needs to attract and better utilise more skilled migrants or risk missing the benefits of the energy transition and AI boom, a parliamentary committee has been told.
Other countries are siphoning talent while clogged settlement pathways, visa uncertainty and under-investment are putting Australia at a disadvantage, according to tech leaders.
"Australia won't be able to migrate its way out of the problem ... unless we are perceived as being a much better destination," Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering fellow Professor Ken Baldwin told the federal probe into skilled migration on Friday.
"We're going to have to redouble our efforts to attract people."
Labor is under pressure to clamp down on overseas arrivals as anti-immigration One Nation surges and public attitudes towards migration sours.
Fixating on the roughly 300,000 total migrants a year distracted from bigger problems with Australia's skilled migration avenues, which welcome about 86,000 annually, the speakers said.
But the MPs were told a perfect system would likely still underperform the demands of a world innovating at break-neck speed.
"We're not going to be able to rely on that skilled migration that we used to 20 years ago, because in the past we relied on opportunities to bring people from India, from Nepal, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering chief executive Peter Derbyshire said.
"These people are now needed in these other countries,"
The skilled migrants Australia already has were also under-utilised, Mr Derbyshire said.
About half of Australia's 266,000 foreign-born engineers are working outside their profession, according to the academy.
"We do bring in a fair number of engineers, and a lot of them are not working as engineers, they are working as taxi drivers," he told the committee.
Speakers also shared stories about skilled workers from the US and Canada who faced year-long waits for visas, partly over anxiety about foreigners handling critical technology.
"If we really do not have talented people here, what we are trying to protect?" Australian Academy of Science Professor Chennupati Jagadish said.
"There are many allied countries with whom we collaborate ... but at the same time, we are doing this."
Australia was not moving fast enough to ride the innovation wave, Prof Baldwin said.
"It is at the moment at the bottom of the of the tier when it comes to our international comparators," he said.
