We need to make sure Australians can fill the jobs of the future
In the long aftermath of a pandemic that exposed the fragility of modern economies, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called together business, labour, and government for a September summit in Canberra — an attempt to transform collective vulnerability into collective purpose. The gathering arrives not in a moment of calm, but amid continuing Covid deaths, acute skills shortages, and deep inequities in how essential services reach the most remote communities. It is, at its heart, a wager that honest conversation about the future can begin to repair what years of dependence and neglect have left undone.
- Australia is still recording Covid deaths daily — 13 in a single day — even as the government pivots from crisis management to long-term economic reconstruction.
- A crippling backlog of unprocessed visas has left skills shortages festering across the economy, forcing the government to consider sweeping changes to migration law to attract and retain global talent.
- The summit on September 1–2 is designed to force a rare alignment between unions, business leaders, and civil society around wages, enterprise bargaining, and the shape of future industries.
- Clean energy and domestic manufacturing are being positioned not merely as environmental goals but as the structural foundation for high-skilled Australian jobs less vulnerable to global supply chain collapse.
- Meanwhile, a disability royal commission in Alice Springs is exposing a quiet crisis: First Nations people with disabilities are being forced to permanently abandon their communities just to access NDIS services that do not exist where they live.
On a Monday afternoon in July, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a jobs and skills summit to be held September 1 and 2 at Parliament House — a gathering of business leaders, union representatives, civil society groups, and government officials tasked with charting how Australia might grow back stronger from the pandemic. He framed it as a once-in-a-generation opportunity born from a once-in-a-generation crisis.
The announcement came as Australia recorded 13 Covid deaths that same day, with New South Wales reporting eight of them alongside more than 7,500 new cases and over 2,000 hospitalizations. Victoria added nearly 8,700 cases of its own. The virus had not finished with the country, even as the government's attention was turning toward what came next.
Albanese's economic vision was shaped by hard lessons. The pandemic had revealed how dangerously dependent Australia had become on distant supply chains — a vulnerability the war in Ukraine had only deepened. He argued that manufacturing needed to return home, and that clean energy — solar, wind, green hydrogen — offered not just environmental benefit but the foundation for high-value, high-skilled employment. Enterprise bargaining reform was also on the table, with both employers and unions acknowledging the current system was falling short.
More immediately, the government was confronting a massive inherited backlog of visa applications at a moment when skills shortages were acute. Albanese signalled that changes to the Migration Act were under consideration, with better pathways to permanent residency seen as essential to competing in a global labour market.
Elsewhere in the country, other crises were unfolding. A Covid outbreak was confirmed aboard a cruise ship docked in Brisbane. And in Alice Springs, a disability royal commission was hearing testimony about the NDIS's failure to reach remote First Nations communities. Of more than 37,000 First Nations NDIS participants, only around 10 percent lived in remote areas — in part because some people with disabilities had been compelled to permanently leave their communities, their families, and their culture simply to access services that did not exist where they lived. First Nations applicants were also approved for the NDIS at a lower rate than non-Indigenous applicants, pointing to systemic barriers that went beyond geography.
The jobs summit, then, was being announced into a country managing several crises at once. It represented the government's conviction that gathering the right people around the right questions — about work, about self-sufficiency, about who gets left behind — was itself a form of action worth taking.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stood before the press on a Monday afternoon in July and announced what he framed as a once-in-a-generation opportunity. The pandemic had been a once-in-a-generation crisis, he said, but it had also opened a door. On September 1 and 2, he would convene a jobs and skills summit at Parliament House in Canberra, bringing together business leaders, union representatives, civil society groups, and officials from other levels of government to chart how Australia might grow back stronger. The summit, he explained, was about more than just economic recovery. It was about ensuring that Australians could actually fill the jobs of the future—that the benefits of new industries and economic growth would translate into real work for real people.
The timing was deliberate. As Albanese spoke, Australia was still contending with the tail end of a Covid wave. That same day, the country recorded at least 13 deaths from the virus. New South Wales alone reported eight of those deaths, with 7,586 new cases and 2,002 people hospitalized, including 63 in intensive care. Victoria recorded 8,689 cases with 717 people in hospital. Across all states and territories, the numbers painted a picture of a virus still circulating widely through the community, even as the acute phase of the pandemic seemed to be receding.
The summit itself reflected Albanese's broader economic philosophy, one shaped by what he saw as hard lessons from the pandemic. He expressed concern that enterprise bargaining—the system by which employers and unions negotiate wages and conditions—was not working as effectively as it should. Both sides, he noted, had said as much. More fundamentally, he argued that Australia's vulnerability during the pandemic had exposed a dangerous dependence on global supply chains. The war in Ukraine had only underscored that fragility. Manufacturing, he insisted, needed to return to Australia. A future made in Australia, not one where the country sat at the end of distant supply chains, waiting for goods that might never arrive.
Clean energy was central to this vision. Australia, Albanese argued, had advantages unmatched anywhere in the world—exceptional solar resources, strong wind potential, and emerging capacity in green hydrogen. These were not abstract environmental goods. They were the foundation for high-skilled, high-value jobs. The proportion of production costs tied to labor had shrunk as technology advanced, but that was not a reason for despair. It meant that productivity gains could be seized to create better work, not just more of it.
The government was also grappling with a more immediate skills crisis. Albanese acknowledged that Australia had inherited a massive backlog of visa applications from the previous administration. At a time when skills shortages were acute across the economy, people had been waiting for years to have their cases processed. The government was considering changes to the Migration Act to create better pathways to permanent residency. Temporary migration would continue to play a role—some shortages, Albanese said, would always need to be filled that way—but Australia operated in a global labor market and needed to compete for talent by offering genuine permanence.
While Albanese outlined his economic strategy, other parts of the country were dealing with more immediate crises. In Queensland, a Covid outbreak had been confirmed on the Coral Princess cruise ship, docked in Brisbane after returning from the state's far north. The virus was, according to Queensland's health minister, widespread in the community. In Alice Springs, a disability royal commission had begun five days of hearings focused on the National Disability Insurance Scheme and its operation in remote First Nations communities. The picture that emerged was stark. Of 37,313 First Nations NDIS participants as of March 2022, only about 10 percent lived in remote locations—a disparity explained partly by the fact that some people with disabilities had been forced to leave their communities permanently to access services that simply did not exist where they lived. The shortage of qualified providers in remote areas, what officials called "thin markets," meant that First Nations people sometimes had no choice but to abandon their families, their culture, and their country to get the support they needed. Only 66 percent of First Nations applicants were deemed eligible for the NDIS, compared to 72 percent of non-First Nations applicants—a gap that suggested systemic barriers remained even for those who managed to stay.
Albanese's jobs summit, then, was being announced into a country still managing multiple crises at once: a pandemic that had not yet fully receded, economic vulnerabilities laid bare by global disruption, and deep inequities in access to essential services for some of the most vulnerable Australians. The summit represented the government's bet that bringing the right people together to talk about the future could help address at least some of these challenges.
Notable Quotes
We have a global labour market. We need to acknowledge that. And we need to make sure that we have better pathways as well to a permanent presence in Australia for people to give us the skills that they need.— Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, on migration reform
It's a really scary scenario where people can become disabled or removed from their communities and sometimes are never able to return. So for those people who aren't able to reconnect back with their culture and their community, they become really isolated.— Mick Fallon, Northern Territory manager for the National Disability Services, on First Nations people forced to leave remote communities
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does Albanese keep calling this a "once-in-a-generation" moment? Hasn't he already used that phrase twice?
Because he's trying to reframe the pandemic from pure catastrophe into something that forced a reckoning. The crisis exposed what Australia had been ignoring—that we're too dependent on other countries, that our supply chains are fragile, that we haven't invested in making things here. He wants people to see the summit not as damage control but as a chance to build something different.
But 13 people died that day. Doesn't that undercut the optimism?
It does, and that's the tension he's not really addressing. The pandemic isn't over. People are still in hospital, still dying. But politically, he needs to move the conversation forward. You can't govern entirely in crisis mode.
What about the visa backlog he mentioned? That sounds like a real problem.
It is. Imagine being a skilled worker somewhere else in the world, applying to move to Australia, and then waiting years while the government processes your application. Meanwhile, Australian employers are desperate for people. It's bureaucratic dysfunction that costs the economy real money. But fixing it means changing immigration law, which is always politically fraught.
And the NDIS situation in remote communities—that's a different kind of crisis, isn't it?
Completely different. This isn't about economic growth or jobs. It's about people with disabilities being forced to choose between their families and their survival. A First Nations person in a remote community might need disability support, but there's no provider within hundreds of kilometers. So they move to Darwin or Alice Springs permanently. They lose their culture, their family, their connection to country. And the government system that's supposed to help them actually enables that displacement.
Does Albanese address that in his remarks?
No. He's focused on the summit, on manufacturing, on clean energy jobs. The disability crisis is happening in a different part of the government, in a different hearing room. That's the real problem—these things aren't connected in policy, even though they're all about the same question: who gets left behind?