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The federal government willrewrite Australia's immigration system, with almost every visa category up for change, and a promiseto tighten rules for international students.

Among the changeswill be an immediate lift to the minimum wage threshold for skilled workers, which has been frozen for a decade, and the establishment of a pathway to permanency for about 17,000 temporary workers.

A major review commissioned by the government found the system was "complex, inefficient and inflexible", proposing a wholesale rewrite of theweb ofvisa classes, caveats, tests and other complications that has developed over the years.

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Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil saidthe system was not up to the task to solve the greatest labour shortage Australia has faced since World War II.

Yet, despite that, the minister said Australia offeredfew incentives to fix those shortages.

"We ask an overseas-trained nurse to pay up to $20,000 and wait up to 35 months to get their qualifications recognised and their visa granted," the government's strategy outlined.

The government's plan will, in fact, slightly reduce the immigration intake over the medium term, with the fix for labour shortages to come from improving the quality of who is granted a visa.

Many of the finer details will be worked through in the weeks and months to come, and will be legislated in phases, but Ms O'Neil has outlined her thinking on her "urgent task" to overhaul immigration.

Here's a breakdown of some of the biggest changes.

The federal government and the migration reviewhave deliberately avoidedputting a specific figure on how many immigrants should come to the country each year.

One of the problems with doing so, the reviewer and former treasury boss Dr Martin Parkinson argued, is that the debate around a "big" versus "small" Australia ends up consuming much of the oxygen on immigration reform, and often ignores the much larger number of temporary workers that come to the country.

However, the review does propose shifting from a hard limit to permanent migration each year in favour of measuring by net overseas migration, which would account for both permanent and temporary migration, andhelp shift Australia's economy from being so dependent on temporary workers, who are more exposed to exploitation.

It also suggests shifting migration targets from being annual decisions to being decided over 10-year stretches, which would also allow state governments to be more involved in planning to minimise population pressures on cities.

But,if all the recommendations of the review were implemented, it would result in a slightly smaller immigration intake over the medium term, and speaking at the National Press Club, Ms O'Neil said it was her "desire" that it was slightly tightened in the medium-term.

"I'mnot someone who advocates for a bigAustralia in this conversation," Ms O'Neil told the National Press Club.

"What's really important to me isthat we've got these big nationalproblemsfacing ourcountry and we're not getting theright people here through themigration system to help us addressthem."

The government argues Australia's most important methods to bring necessary and skilled workers are mired in bureaucratic problems.

For example, the occupation codes used on the back-end of Australia's migration, tax and other systems have not been added to since 2013.

There are jobs in Australia today facing labour shortages that did not exist when the code was last updated.

The minister wants to do away with those "outdated, inflexible" lists, and instead give Jobs and Skills Australia the authority to determine what occupations are in need.

The minimum wage that can be offered to a skilled worker on an employer-sponsored visa also hasn't been lifted from its 2013 figure, after it was frozen by the Abbott government in 2014, and not indexed since then.

That means more than 90 per cent of full time workers in Australia are paid above its current threshold of $53,900, and employers are using the scheme to import workers who were never designed to be included, and paying them for less.

The federal government intends to raise that threshold to $70,000 from July.

Ms O'Neil said that lift was "a substantial increase to ensure we have skilled workers coming under a skilled program".

On top of that, the government says "the points test" for skilled visas, which helps determine which applicants are most desirable for improved productivity, is not useful andmust be rewritten.

For example, the reviewers say39-year-olds scoredouble the average 40-year-old because of how a one-year age gap is calculated, and that maximum scores for most people on their English skills and qualifications mean visas are often decided on minor criteria, such as whether they studied in a regional area.

The points test has been identified by government as one of its first targets for reform that could quickly improve the quality of workers being given permanent visas.

Ms O'Neil told the National Press Club that administrative problems were "central" to Australia's immigration woes.

"I have sat with visaprocessors at theHome Affairsdepartment and honestly, hats off tothese people," Ms O'Neil said.

"They are working betweenfour or five different computerprograms, cutting and pastingthings, retyping things you willnot believe the state of this IT, itis a real issue."

Those administrative problems are also leaving employers struggling to fill other roles.

The federal government uses ex-Australian National University vice chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt, also a Nobel laureate, as an example.

When the American astrophysicist came to Australia in the late 90s, it took four days to process his working visa.

The wait for a foreignastrophysicist seeking to work in Australia today is about 180 days.

With more than 100 visa sub-classes for people to navigate, the government says the system must be simplified, making it easier and faster for people to be processed.

Those long waits are exacerbating labour shortages, but there are more issues for employers seeking to bring workers here.

Up-front costs for businesses are prohibitive and the review recommends the fees should be charged monthly instead, with workers allowed to leave their sponsored job and search for work for up to six months to make the system more flexible, and help cut down exploitation.

The federal government has also committed to establishing a pathway to permanency for people on temporary skill shortage visas, to prevent Australia from losing those in-demand workers because their visas have run out.

Currently, one of the biggest groups of migrants toAustralia is international students, and more than half of people granted permanent visas come from that cohort.

But most of those graduates also don't end up working in the industries they studied in, and because the wage threshold for someone to be eligible for a permanent "skilled" visa is set at $53,900, most graduates easily qualify even if they are not working in the in-demand jobs they studied for.

Ms O'Neil told the National Press Club the rules for who could come to study would be tightened, with more supports offered for graduates to help get into skilled work.

"We are assessinginternational students based onwhether we think they will be ableto essentially survive inAustralia's education system; it isa low bar toset, appropriately, as theyare here to learn," Ms O'Neil told the National Press Club.

"The issue is thatthis has become the dominant feederinto our permanent programs, [we have] alowbar and we have a broken test thatconverts someone from a temporary toa permanent migrant."

To support graduates, the federal government will considergranting "automatic" temporary graduate visas to people who complete their studies to provide more certainty to employers hesitant about those graduate's working rights, making it easier to find work in high skill jobs.

But the overall tightening is expected to impact how many international students will be able to study here, which will have consequences for universities reliant on foreign student fees.

"What we're reallytalking about here is making surethat the international studenteducation system is doing what itsays on the label,that is, educating [and]bringing young minds from around theregion ... that is not always the casetoday," Ms O'Neil said.

"This is not aboutreducing the number but I think itis inevitable when we list standardsthat there may be some implicationsfor numbers."

Read more here:
Student visa rules tightened, skilled worker wage threshold lifted as government begins immigration rewrite - ABC News