Australia needs a 'wake-up call' to reduce dependence on other countries

Australia needs to be far more self-sufficient in “training and skilling our own workforce” in order to reduce dependence on other countries, in what demographer Bernard Salt describes as a "wake-up call".

“Just as we need to be far more self-sufficient in manufacturing, we need to be able to train sufficient numbers of people in the right skill sets so that we retain independence," Mr Salt told Sky News host Peta Credlin.

“This is an absolute wake-up call on a whole range of fronts. We have lived life for the past 25 years, I think, on the presumption that there is this easy flow of people and students and workers from one country to another.

“That flow, that globalisation flow, is predicated on the assumption that you can move. But what if there is a global pandemic … or if there are significant geo-political tensions.”

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