Health

Turnbull’s 457 visa ban to change health system

Apr 19, 2017

Some health care workers will be barred from the new visa.

With the Government’s new working visa set to exclude a number of key health roles, the faces greeting you at your next medical appointment will soon be changing.

The health care system is set for big changes following the decision to abolish the 457 visa in favour of something more restrictive for foreign workers and beneficial to Australian job hunters.

A large percentage of jobs in Australia’s health care system are filled by foreign workers; nurses alone makes up half of these positions with 33 per cent of all nursing staff were born overseas.

Dentists, nursing staff, emergency service workers, theatre technicians, and more have all been removed from the Skilled Occupations (SOL) List to make way for Aussie graduates looking for work.

While the AMA says it is “cautiously welcoming” the changes, it warned the Government needs to ensure there are enough skilled Australians to fill jobs in rural areas.

“It is important that we strike the right balance between filling vacancies with locally trained graduates and ensuring that communities, especially in rural and remote Australia, have doctors in the right numbers and with the appropriate specialist skills and experience to meet patient needs,” AMA President Michael Gannon said.

The broadranging SOL reform brought on by the Howard Government opened the visa system and the pathway to residency to thousands of new migrants and saw Australia’s immigration numbers grow from 8,000 in 1996 to 40,000 in 2006.

Dr Dimitria Groutsis, Co-Convenor of the Migrants@Work Research Group at the University of Sydney Business School, said these changes were so broad they left Australia open to exploitation.

“While the pros were an ‘efficient’ job match as a result of the demand driven pathway, the massive blowout has meant that the pathway has grown in such a way that it has been opened to exploitation, rather than a process of capitalising on the skills of overseas qualified professionals in order to respond to chronic skills shortages,” she said.

“There is also a very broad band of what is considered ‘skilled’ with the visa pathway growing to include all manner of occupations.”

The Turnbull Government’s newly refined SOL has cut 189 jobs and ditched the path to residency.

Will there be enough doctors to treat patients across the country?

With a large swath of skilled medical staff no longer allowed to work in Australia on the 457 visa, there are questions around whether or not Aussie doctors have the skills to fill the positions.

Dr Gannon says there is currently an “oversupply” of Aussie medical graduates and that the next step must be making sure they are trained to confidently fill the gaps left by foreign workers.

“Australia’s definitely reached self-sufficiency in terms of total numbers of medical graduates,” he said.

“We’ve got to make sure that the public hospitals, the private hospitals, the general practices, have the training positions so that we can get Australian-trained doctors out there and working.”

Rural areas in particular will be a strong focus going forward, with the Government needing to make regional positions appealing to young graduates entering the health care workforce.