Dr. Peter Varela

So when we talk about

how we want to think about this pathway.

We do have to be very careful not to sort of get too down on this exercise.

We still have a fantastic education system.

Now, in terms of how closely you want to tie education to that permanent migration pathway, this is kind of an ongoing debate and it's a pendulum that kind of swings back and forth for different countries.

If you go back, there was the Knight Review in Australia and there was a concern

at that time, that we maybe want to tie these, make it a clearer pathway for migrants.

And so some of the reforms at that point, the graduate visa reforms, the adding of studying in Australia to the points test,

were designed to sort of encourage that pathway.

And the way I sort of see it is a bit of a pendulum back at this point to kind of separate out education in Australia, that international study, with the pathway a little bit.

And so I think people would be sort of relatively on board with that pendulum swinging back.

It's just a question of how far is where the disagreement goes.

So migration, selective migration program, skills migration program are essentially about getting people into jobs in the Australian labor market and trying to get them in pretty quickly into those jobs.

If you miss several years, it's gonna be harder to kind of catch up.

That's kind of your goal.

The way that I approach this,

We have two broad styles of visas.

We have ones that are independent.

Our points-tested visas are known as independent visas.

And we have our employer-sponsored visas, where in order to get a visa, you have to have an employer that's willing to sort of vouch for you on that visa.