Does anyone notice that almost everyone you meet in Australia is not working in a field that would make their skills shine?
The labour market system has become increasingly inefficient over the years. The system is clearly broken and the two main political parties and business lobbies think that the solution is to bring in a lot of migrants into Australia hoping that will fix the problem. Those migrants come only to be pushed into this giant milking machine and experience the sad realities of Australian life. Australia is really good at marketing itself but it is actually a fairly bad place to live and work when you drill down to all the details. There are many countries in Europe where you will not have all the stress but have many of the same amenities. Ultimately when the hammer falls, the problem lies in the recruitment agencies.
I've seen a few ideas floated from reading the forums, ranging from problems with recruiters to discrimination. Time and time again there are very strong examples that something is wrong, especially when I see someone who is skilled randomly turn to doing something that is borderline legal, only for it not to pay, and obviously from what I could tell they were still working in a family cleaning business. If they had a proper job in those 10+ years they surely could have earned more with the skills they had. So I found that example a really strong indicator that Australia is breeding its own problems and I would argue it disproportionately affects locals rather than migrants.
I have another theory I want to add which is "are Australians just too soft when it comes to finding a job?". It takes time to find that right job and it seems like most people are content with just taking any job. I put this down to the Australian culture where they bash people on welfare. My opinion is that the welfare system is supposed to prevent the outcome the country is currently experiencing. I keep seeing people say they will just take the first job they can get and try later, but the effect is most people just end up in retail or delivering amazon and uber and then they just give up on a proper career. So, the reform Australia needs to make is probably something along the lines of UBI that gives Australians a fighting chance because ultimately that is going to result in the most efficient allocation of labour.
Take a look at how inefficient the welfare system is today. It needs massive reform. Most job seeker agencies are just a tool of compliance that perpetuate the inefficient allocation of labour. All your taxpayer funds are funneled into this parasitic industry and that money could be better off spent developing some type of tech industry. It could be agricultural technology and uniquely Australian, it doesn't have to be copying silicon valley, but Australia doesn't even have the funds to spend on anything like that because the bulk of welfare money gets spent ensuring people comply with some pointless welfare requirement. How low can Australians sink when they derive happiness from seeing others struggle?
Hands down if Australia rolled out UBI and removed all these agencies Australia would be saving lots of taxpayer funds. Centrelink and the private companies that exist to leech taxpayer funds could be abolished overnight and replaced with a simpler system. It would create a moral hazard for the 1% of parasites which are doing the same as they are now in the current system, but ultimately the net benefit is shown to be greater.
Another solution would be to have a world government that would implement these solutions. People are scared of a world government, but a lot of the ideas floated by the World Economic Forum are actually quite good compared to the policies which have been implemented by the predominantly English speaking nation states (UK, US, CAN, AUS, NZ). I won't use the word Western economies as there are some countries in Europe which are our allies that make our labour allocation look vastly inferior. WEF policies are undoubtedly diametrically opposed to policies implemented in predominantly English speaking nations, but I can't say they are a step in the wrong direction.
Ultimately the issue of inefficient allocation of labour has cost the Australian economy billions, possibly trillions and is the main reason I see why Australia doesn't actually have a proper high tech industry. There are offshoots of silicon valleys that exist in Europe and if you watch Bloomberg a lot you will notice a lot of chip equipment comes out from the Netherlands and neighbouring countries. A lot of the famous equipment used to manufacture clothing comes from France, Germany, and others which are often found in Chinese, now Vietnamese and Thai factories. There is nothing like that in Australia. In my opinion this is a reflection of how poorly on how Australians treat their graduates whether they be imported or locals. Australia definitely has some level of talent here locally, and let's not forget all those imported migrants; at least some of them should have some skills.
This race to the bottom has begun many years ago. Australia is essentially creeping slowly towards become a permanent banana republic. A lot of people have moved overseas to pursue their careers. That trend can be reversed by radical changes but our politicians are not bold enough to take the step.
Australia needs massive reform which starts by reforming both the recruitment agencies, and the welfare system needs a massive overhaul to prevent people from being pushed into substandard jobs. Eventually Australia is going to run into a problem whereby Housing and Mining have a downturn.
Australia also needs to stop migrants taking up all those recruitment jobs because frankly is it just me or are a majority of them just people on working holiday visas just from a basic web crawl on LinkedIn? They don't have the same experience or allegiance to Australia. We have restrictions on how politicians cannot be dual citizens, how about we try and start here.
Nonsense.
Australia is quite high on the quality of living index.
We are just full of whiners.