IN RELEASING its Future of the Workforce: Skilled Migrants in Building and Construction report, Master Builders Australia has called on the Federal Government to establish a dedicated building and construction visa pathway.

“Skilled migrants represent a vital part of the building and construction industry and are key to building the homes, infrastructure, schools and hospitals communities are crying out for,” Master Builders CEO Denita Wawn said.

“Australia faces a significant housing crisis with an undersupply of homes and increasing demand for owner-occupiers, renters and social and crisis accommodation. 

“The industry needs an extra 500,000 extra people into our sector over the next few years if we are going to build those 1.2 million homes and supporting infrastructure under the Housing Accord.”

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) confirmed earlier this week that home building was expected to slow further due to rising construction costs with the availability of labour one of the biggest barriers.

“It’s clear our ability to train more apprentices domestically cannot keep up with demand. Skilled migrants who are qualified and ready to go will help relieve some of the workforce pressures,” Ms Wawn said.

“The workforce must be supported to grow in line with demand and become more productive.

“But the current migration framework to bring in skilled migrants is broken. The system must be better to prioritise the skilled workers who are needed to build these homes and support the economy.

“Just like Canada, the UK and New Zealand, Australia needs construction-specific pathways for appropriately skilled migrant workers to ensure quality applicants and the prioritisation of trades workers and occupations that are in significant shortage domestically,” Ms Wawn said.

“It is the only way Australia will meet its building and infrastructure targets and boost its workforce.

“We need the visa and skills recognition process to be simpler, more cost effective and quicker so more suitably skilled migrants can join the building and construction industry.”

Master Builders has called on the Federal Government to:

• Develop and implement a construction industry-specific visa pathway that makes it quick, easy and cost-effective for migrants with the trade skills Australia needs “to get here and get out on the tools – working in a role for which they are appropriately qualified”.
• Ensure all trade and trade-related occupations are included in the Core Skills pathway of the Skills in Demand visa.
• Improve the process and reduce the need for skills assessments for migrants coming from countries with comparable qualification and training frameworks.
• Ensure the skills recognition process that remains is quick, simple and cost effective.
• Streamline national licensing frameworks insofar as possible to enable workforce movement and allow for nationally accredited gap training for all licensed trades.

The full list of MBA recommendations can be found by clicking here.

www.masterbuilders.com.au

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AUSTRALIAN Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, Bruce Billson, is urging Federal Parliament to give certainty to small business about two crucial tax breaks announced in last year’s Federal Budget.

“Time is running out with just six weeks until the end of the financial year for small business to claim these deductions, but they still don’t know if they’re allowed to make the claims,” Mr Billson said.

“We’re hearing from confused small businesses who just want certainty. I encourage the Parliament to act swiftly to guarantee these small business tax incentives.”

The two measures relate to the instant asset write-off and a tax-incentive for energy efficiency upgrades. 

The legislation would set the instant asset write-off at $20,000 for businesses with a turnover of up to $10 million, allowing them to deduct up to that amount for eligible assets between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024.

Federal Treasurer announced in this week’s budget the scheme would be extended to June 30, 2025.

Without legislation authorising the change, small businesses can only write off $1000 for eligible assets and then apply general depreciation rules.

Similarly, the small business energy incentive worth up to $20,000, announced in April 2023 ahead of last year’s budget, will provide an additional 20 percent depreciation for eligible assets that support electrification and more efficient use of energy by small businesses.

The bonus will be available to businesses with an annual turnover of less than $50 million and is aimed at helping them save on energy bills by making investments like electrifying their heating and cooling systems, upgrading to more efficient fridges and induction cooktops, and installing batteries and heat pumps.

“The scheme requires eligible assets or upgrades to be first used or installed ready for use between 1 July 2023 and 30 June 2024, but with the legislation still not passed time is fast running out for small businesses to meet that deadline,” Mr Billson said.

“This uncertainty has highlighted the need for predictability and certainty so a small business can plan in a sure-footed way for important investments that uplift the capacity, the productivity and drive innovation in their business.

“Right now, we need to be energising enterprise. We need to be giving more encouragement for people to turn an idea into an investment and to make that big decision to turn scarce resources into new capability, new equipment, new technology to help with the success of that enterprise and the livelihoods that depend upon it,” he said.

“Having that encouragement to invest in new kit, new plant and equipment, new technology is really an important signal, but what’s needed is the certainty that these tax breaks are real.”

The instant asset write-off is an ongoing incentive with the amount and threshold set each year. The energy incentive is a one-off scheme that ends in six weeks.

Mr Billson said concerned small businesses should seek advice from their accountant, bookkeeper, tax agent or trusted adviser and refer to ato.gov.au for more information.

www.asbfeo.gov.au

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By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>

TECHNOLOGY has transformed the real estate industry – for consumers and agents alike.

Danielle Harmer, the general manager of product for all of Domain’s agent products, who is also the general manager of the Allhomes area of the platform, said it has now become an essential part of the business,

Compared with 20 years ago, property technology (proptech) is now a crucial part of marketing a property as well as keeping agents in touch with vendors.

“Without it, we would be listing houses in newspapers and hope for the best,” Ms Harmer told Talking Business. 

“A ton of investment is going into proptech, into portals, into all sort of technology that services the real estate industry in Australia.”

Danielle Harmer classifies the technology in two ‘buckets’.

One is around marketing and using the technology to reach the largest possible audience.

The other is in servicing real estate agents.

“There’s a lot of complex processes that go into selling and listing a house and there’s ton of technology that real estate agents use that are workflow solutions that help them look good in front of vendors and run what is a pretty complex process when people are selling houses,” Ms Harmer said.

She said she made extensive use of data every day, looking at how much audience Domain has reached, the conversion on listing portals, the number of listings, the days on market.

“There is so much data in our world,” she Ms Harmer said. “I would say I would use it every day, not only on the technology side to drive our roads and what we use our engineering capacity to develop, but also what we talk about with our clients and what we go to market and write about for our consumers. Facts about the property industry, as well as what we go to, our core business, which is our real estate agent industry,” she said.

Ms Harmer said Domain has launched an artificial intelligence tool called Lead Scope which helps agents identify who in their data base might be looking to sell.

“AI and machine learning have been around for a long time. We’re just seeing that space advance very quickly,” she said.

Many agents were now starting to use the basics of ChatGPT when writing their listing copy for selling a house that is being placed on the market.

She said a large proportion of Domain’s workforce were (tech) engineers.

“Domain is a technology business and a significant proportion of Domain Group’s workforce are the incredible engineers that build on the technology that supports our real estate agents, our banking clients and our consumers,” Ms Harmer said.

She said when there are few selling properties, “which is happening right now in the real estate market”, agents have to use the technology to find listings and to win business. When there are a lot properties on the market, agents will use the technology to get in front of a wider audience.

“If I had to give advice to an agency choosing different technology to use, then you’re going for scalability, you’re going for integration, you’re going to compliance and cyber security and something you know will survive the distance in the technology space,” Ms Harmer said.\

www.domain.com.au

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness.

https://play.acast.com/s/talkingbusiness/talking-business-interview-with-danielle-harmer-from-domain

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