Leveraging the expertise of migrants in Australia

Australia’s future workforce depends on its ability to attract, recognise, and retain highly skilled talent. The Australian Cyber Security Strategy and the Department of Home Affairs’ skilled migration objectives both emphasise the urgent need to build a strong, diverse, and sustainable pipeline of expertise to meet national capability gaps. Yet, despite these strategic priorities, many highly skilled migrants continue to experience systemic barriers that prevent them from fully participating in the Australian workforce, resulting in underemployment, career stagnation, and lost national capability. 

This panel brings together a diverse group of people who have migrated to Australia with significant professional experience, qualifications, and specialist skills, including those aligned to high demand sectors such as cyber security, technology, engineering, health, and professional services. Their expertise includes advanced technical knowledge, leadership experience, global best practice, multilingual capability, and cross-cultural insight. These skills are precisely those identified as critical to Australia’s workforce resilience, innovation, and global competitiveness. 

Despite this, panellists will share their lived experiences of fragmented workforce pathways and ongoing struggles to secure sustainable employment. Challenges include the nonrecognition or devaluation of overseas qualifications, inconsistent skills assessment processes, an overemphasis on "local experience," and limited access to professional networks. For women, these obstacles are often compounded by gendered expectations, caring responsibilities, racial and accent bias, and reduced access to sponsorship or senior roles. Visa insecurity further intensifies these challenges, with short term visas, restricted work rights, and employer reluctance to engage visa holders undermining long term career sustainability. 

The discussion will explore how current migration and employment systems, while designed to attract skilled workers, often fail to translate arrival into meaningful workforce participation. This disconnect is particularly evident in high priority sectors such as cyber security, where Australia faces persistent skill shortages while capable professionals remain excluded or underutilised. Panellists will reflect on the personal, economic, and professional impacts of prolonged job seeking, skills erosion, and workforce disengagement, highlighting the human cost of systemic inefficiencies. 

Importantly, this session moves beyond problem identification to focus on solutions. The panel will examine what needs to change across policy, visa settings, skills recognition frameworks, employer practices, and workforce development programs to create clearer, fairer, and more sustainable pathways. This includes rethinking credential recognition, strengthening employer accountability, improving access to local experience opportunities, expanding mentoring and sponsorship, and embedding culturally and gender responsive employment strategies. 

This panel calls on policymakers, employers, industry leaders, and educators to align workforce pathways with national strategy. To shift from a deficit-based view of migrant women to one that recognises them as a critical solution. By addressing systemic barriers and enabling career sustainability, Australia can better realise its skilled migration objectives while building a more inclusive, future ready workforce.