BAJAJ, Mr Gaurav, Board Member, Little India Traders Association [by video link] GUPTA, Ms Anya, SarasCare [by video link] GUPTA, Mr Gautam, President, Little India Traders Association; and Director, SarasCare [by video link] KOMARAGIRI, Mr Praveen Kumar, Vice President, Little India Traders Association [by video link] SHENOY, Mr Ganesh Naveen, Director, Saraswati Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Ltd [by video link] [11:26] CHAIR: Welcome. I understand that information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses giving evidence to Senate committees has been provided to you. Do you have anything to add about the capacity in which you appear? Ms Gupta : I am a year 12 student at the University High School, and I'm the founder of a youth engagement program at Docklands known as docklands.community. Mr Bajaj : I am a board member for Little India Traders Association and I'm [inaudible]— CHAIR: You've gone mute, Mr Bajaj. Mr Bajaj : I'm a board member of Little India Traders Association. I'm also [inaudible] accountant and run a [inaudible] by the name of Insta Accounting. CHAIR: Do you have brief opening statements? Mr Gupta : Yes. Thank you, Chair and senators, for having us and making us part of this very, very important forum. I'm joined by my colleagues, and all of them are founders, traders and community builders from multiple generations with one simple belief: this country is full of people who want to build and be more productive. Obviously, Australia is a great nation with a great set-up. We know that this country gives to its people and we have spent our lives adding to it. Our submission talks about removing the handbrake. Australia is, in our opinion, like the best car in the world. The engineers are people drawn from every nation on earth. The beauty is its vast land and the soil, which is as good as gold. A handbrake is not a fault in the car, but it could be a feature. It just needs to be released with one hand at the moment the driver decides. It enhances the experience of sitting in the car and the pace with which we do things. Each of us brings lived experience from our own professional lives, whether it's building community events, which my colleague Ganesh will speak about, and training programs; advising small businesses through their hardest moments, which Gaurav Bajaj will speak about; watching skill families choose between regions and the exit, which Praveen will be speaking about; or studying in the very future that this committee is sharing, which Anya will be discussing about. Each one of us will describe the handbrake, how we found it and what we think can be done to enhance productivity. We have a couple of simple ideas that we are bringing to the table. First, we see the person as a whole. Australians prove themselves every day through work, enterprise training and service. Yet our systems still judge them by paperwork. We ask for a small, voluntary pilot to test whether verified contributions can help decisions and whether it supports merit. It never replaces it, but it enhances people's recognition to be seen as people. Second, back our own land. Our geography is not a problem; it is our inheritance, be it in resources, agriculture, energy or industry. We would like to model the automation dividend where it lives, in our regions, and bring it closer to metro cities. Third, help the government deliver. Catch problems in month 4, not year 4. Carefully governing artificial intelligence can help accountable people see trouble early, and it must never replace their judgement. We are not asking to touch safety, environment, privacy or merit. Our method is simple: start small, measure honestly, publish the failures with the successes, stop what fails and scale what works. Everything Australia needs is here, and we just need to work together and see if we can reduce some regulations and make it easier. Thank you. CHAIR: Thank you. That's all we have for opening comments. That's very efficient of you. Very productive! Senator Mckenzie. Senator McKENZIE: I really want to thank everyone here for this session for the time to present to our inquiry and also to make submissions. I really, really appreciate it. Mr Gupta, can I start with something we've all seen in our daily lives. We jump into an Uber—highly qualified engineer driving people from A to B. I studied mathematics at uni. I'm one of the co-chairs for the Parliamentary Friends of Engineers. It was one of the first Senate inquiries I did a long time ago. The lack of engineers that we have, the skill shortage we have right across that, drives me nuts. Can you please explain why every second Uber driver has an engineering degree from an Australian university and isn't being employed as an engineer. Mr Gupta : I would like to invite my colleague Praveen to jump in, and then I will add to it. Senator McKENZIE: Absolutely. Mr Gupta : He specialises in that. He works in regional areas. Mr Komaragiri : Chair and members of the committee, I'll just go through some of the things that I would like to speak to, and then we can go on to the questions. I draw my experience as the Director of Xcel Global Services, where I work with skilled migrants. [inaudible] defines productivity as 'turning inputs, labour and capital, into goods and services'. But [inaudible] today is that Australia does not have a skills shortage. We also underutilise the skills that are already here, which the senator mentioned. When a qualified professional remains outside the occupation or on a regional [inaudible], they cannot operate at full capacity. Qualifications, equipment and business investment are not converted into services. This is lost productivity. The impact is greater regionally, where each vacancy or departure removes more local capacity. Many professions are affected. To keep my organisation and focus on three highly skilled health professions for this hearing, I thought of talking about examples that I've gone through in my personal interaction in pharmacy, general practice and dentistry with a particular focus on regional Australia. They show three different breaks in the chain: access to supervised practice, coordination of recognition pathways and regional retention. Again, I'm not asking Australia to lower standards. I am asking whether qualified people currently in Australia have a supported opportunity to meet them. A lot of people, when they talk about [inaudible], it's about bringing in more people. I'm making it very clear that we already have a lot of people here. Again, I go back to what the senator has said: you have qualified people with skills and education doing underqualified roles. My first example goes to the pharmacy industry and pharmacists. Jobs and Skills Australia identifies retail pharmacists as being a shortage nationally and in every state and territory. Australian pharmacists are also assessed as being a regional shortage nationally. Yet an overseas qualified pharmacist currently in Australia can pass the relevant Australian Pharmacy Council assessment and still be unable to secure the supervised placement needed for registration. A knowledge stream candidate must complete an accredited intern training program of 1,575 supervised hours of practice, then do the required examinations. I understand that those safeguards are appropriate, but placements are very competitive because each one needs an approved workplace employer committed and a qualified pharmacist with enough time to supervise. Here, the qualified applicant has completed the assessment, but it does not guarantee a placement or registration. So unmet demand can coexist with qualified pharmacists who cannot progress into registered practice. The qualification is not working to patient services. Rural internship incentives exist, but some may not cover overseas qualified knowledge stream candidates. Equally, employer and supervisor support should be available in genuine shortage areas, subject to every pharmacy board requirement and without displacing Australian graduates. This is increasingly important as Australia ages. According to the stats that I've got, by around 2060, almost one in four Australians are predicted to be 65 or older, and the government is already funding onsite pharmacists in aged care, yet— Mr Gupta : [inaudible] Mr Komaragiri : Sorry; I'll speed up. The second thing is about general practice, or GPs. Jobs and Skills Australia also identifies a national shortage of GPs. Australian government modelling projects a shortfall of about 7,700 GPs by 2033 without further intervention, with regional, remote and vulnerable communities being disproportionately affected. An experienced, overseas trained GP still needs to have the verified credentials, yet they can't get into it. Keeping in line with the time, what I'll say is that I ask the committee to be concerned about three practical recommendations. One is to fast-track the whole journey: one lead agency accountable for measuring assessment, supervised placements, registration, development, employment and regional retention. Senator McKENZIE: Sorry; can I interrupt, because I do have a whole suite of questions and we've only got limited time, and I know other senators have questions too. You've outlined prac placements et cetera within the medical profession, pharmacy et cetera. I really just want to get a short, sharp answer to where the system is a problem. Is it the professional colleges, is it the accreditation bodies, is it the bureaucracy? Do we just have an outdated system? Is there prejudice? Why do we have highly skilled individuals here in our community who are driving Ubers instead of being engineers or being employed in their qualifications? I want you to be really honest and very clear. Mr Komaragiri : As an example, a pharmacist can't get to the next stage of being placed if he doesn't get an internship. Not a lot of employers are investing in or giving them an internship, which has to be paid, and overseas-qualified applicants are not part of some of the government subsidies that it gives to pharmacies, so that is one of the examples. A lot of people have qualified as engineers but, again, they don't have the pathway after the qualification to get into an internship, which leads into a practical use of their knowledge in order to get a job or profession. Senator McKENZIE: Maybe someone else on the panel can answer. I understand you're very experienced about pharmacy and you've given a very detailed answer there. It's not just pharmacists— Mr Gupta : [inaudible] Senator McKENZIE: Yes, of course, please. Mr Gupta : I think it's very important to understand that it's a multifaceted problem. There is not one single issue that can solve it. For example, we already know that Australia has some of the best engineers in the world because our universities are fantastic. In fact, when I was doing research for this submission, we found out that the biggest robot on earth is in Australia. It's not an American or Chinese thing. We are well trained in that. If I was not doing prep work for this, I probably would not know that. So why are engineers not getting a job? We have trained a lot of engineers, mainly IT engineers, and people from mechanical backgrounds. We identified that, even though they are qualified in Australia, they are still judged as an overseas person. I think that's one big blocker. Once they qualify in Australia, they should be judged at par with an Australian person. If we cannot mentally overcome that hurdle, I think we will always have productivity loss. Senator McKENZIE: I think that's a really good assessment of one of the key barriers. We don't want to have a system where—we had evidence earlier to this committee—people's surnames, for instance, are a barrier to them being employed. We don't want to end up with a system like in America where a Jewish man like Bob Dylan had to change his name in order to get a look in, shall we say. Can we legislate our way out of this, or is it about a cultural change more broadly in our communities and our professional sector? Mr Gupta : I think it will have to be looked at from both ends; it will have to be culture and legislation. In our submission, we write about a kind of green framework. I'll just try to summarise it so that you understand. When I talk about colour, religion, accent, name, ethnicity, anything can be disruptive. All we need is one biased person in the system. It doesn't matter whether someone in the public sector or private sector if they are biased. All we need is about 10 to 15 per cent of such people and they wreak havoc. Because the recruitment process goes through multiple steps, all you need is one wrong person in that whole series of steps to write a wrong report for that person and that's it. All of a sudden, that person, the person who's applying, becomes an outcast. I'll give you an example to make it easier to understand. Someone has contributed decades in public life in Australia—let's say, in a small business. If they run a business and they are tenant in a big building—let's say ANZ—and ANZ closes and leaves that particular premise, that restaurant or cafe owner gets punished through no fault of their own. They have been serving food. They have been doing good work. They have been running a cafe for 10 years. An engineer who's completed the degree, got the qualifications, is globally recognised but is not getting a job. It's not their fault. What happened is that we are not measuring them in 360 degrees of view, right? The people we are talking about have family, have lives and have contributed to society. They may have hired people. They may have done some research, whether at university or in a workplace. No-one is measuring that. I see a gap in that. One of the biggest gaps is that we only can judge people at the moment by their names and the credit histories they have, which is designed by the banks and is a very one-dimensional measurement. Can we create something like map their contribution? We call it a 'contribution recognition framework'. It could be called anything else. But, please, let's start looking at whether it's a small business or an individual who's driving an Uber. Maybe the driving itself should be also considered as a contribution to the economy. At the end of the day, they are still driving. They're still moving people. They're still contributing to the economy, not sitting, and they are not on welfare, essentially. They are not losing hope. Senator McKENZIE: Yes, I appreciate that. One of the aims of this inquiry is to assess whether our migration intake is properly matched to skills, and whether education providers are seeing international students as cash cows rather than a skills pipeline in a genuine sense. Your submission is about removing friction for the people that are already here. I'd be interested, for a future projection, whether your view would be that a smaller, better matched intake would be better for the future at the front door to address the queues and backlogs that you mentioned in your submission. Mr Gupta : With all due respect, we have already imported a lot of people. Our problem is: can we settle them first? Senator McKENZIE: First? Mr Gupta : Exactly. If we can't settle the people who are already here, we can't retain them. We can't get them into jobs. We have our own young people. If you look at yesterday's Channel 9 report from Perth, the city with the lowest unemployment rate in Australia, their young people are saying that artificial intelligence is going to remove jobs for them and they are fearful. To me that is really telling us something. Our own Australian kids are living in fear. They don't know what subjects to choose. We have a lot of discussion with their youth groups and they're like, 'What subject should I take? What happens in six months' time, two years' time? It may be irrelevant for us.' So in that scenario, I think planning for future becomes very, very complex. What I would really suggest is that we really focus on people onshore first, bring them up to speed and take them with us. Senator McKENZIE: Perfect, thank you. Mr Komaragiri : Can I add something? Senator McKENZIE: Oh, of course, yes. Mr Komaragiri : The intake program is very good with the skilled migration. We're getting skilled migrants. As Mr Gupta said, we are still recruiting a lot of people on employer sponsored visas, while these people who have permanent residency are already here. There is no single agency that looks at and matches these people that we already assessed as highly skilled, that's why they got permanent residency. There is no handholding for them once they are here to match them to the skills needed, while the employers are bringing someone new from overseas. Senator McKENZIE: Yes. It's a good point. Senator ANANDA-RAJAH: I'd like to draw in Anya here on SarasCare. It speaks to what we just talked about, the resettlement or the settlement services that SarasCare provides. Could you maybe talk us through your job readiness programs and how these have gone. I understand that these have driven some successful outcomes in getting people into work. What do you think is the secret sauce? Mr Komaragiri : I can speak on it if Ganesh is not here. Senator ANANDA-RAJAH: Is Anya here? Is she able to speak? Are you a volunteer? Ms Gupta : Yes, I am a volunteer. Senator ANANDA-RAJAH: Go ahead, Anya. Ms Gupta : I just want to say that I think Australia has a really strong education system and that our subjects are very interesting. We learn a lot about the big ideas, and I can talk about them in a way that connects even to places like the US, but my problem is that I can't always connect what I'm learning to places like Ballarat or industries like agriculture. We get taught a lot about global industries but not enough about how to actually get involved in the parts of Australia that drive its productivity. Like he was saying earlier, before the submission, I didn't even know that Australia had the biggest robot in the world. I genuinely thought that that was a title that was reserved for China or the US. I think that we need to do a better job of linking education to the real Australia. For example, I take VCE politics, and we learn a lot about the global issues and how Australia has responded, but we don't learn a lot about the issues that are happening in Australia itself—I can always expand more on that. I've also studied VCE economics, and I like that we learn frameworks on how the world works and where we stand globally, but sometimes it feels like we're learning about problems in theory without being shown how to actually step into the world and be part of the solution. I think that that's especially true when it comes to the industries that actually keep Australia running. In economics, we learned that some of Australia's biggest strengths come from its land: from our commodities, our resources and our agriculture. But, in the classroom, I don't feel like we're shown a real pathway into those industries. I think that kind of matters because, if we want young people to help make Australia more productive, then I think education needs to do more than just prepare us for exams; I think it needs to prepare us for real life. I think that means teaching us how to understand regional Australia, how to start our own business, how to use technology to improve productivity and how to write and share our own policies and ideas. It also means showing us that there is a place for us in the industries that shape Australia's future. Right now, a lot of my generation feel like we're being taught to observe the country and not help build it. We hear a lot about AI, social media and global competition, but we don't learn enough about our own economy, our own land and our own role in it. I think young people want more than just a place in the classroom; I think we want a place in nation building. Senator ANANDA-RAJAH: Well said. We will definitely pass that on to the education minister to, perhaps, better spruik the real attributes of this country. I think you spoke really well, and you've brought out an important point: the fact that most of our population actually clings to the coast, but regional Australia is an absolute powerhouse and you can have a very, very good quality of life in regional Australia. Senator McKENZIE: Hear, hear! Senator ANANDA-RAJAH: Yes, absolutely. I'm interested in some of the settlement programs or settlement services that SarasCare has undertaken. What were the elements that drove the success in those programs? Mr Gupta : Ganesh, can you please— Mr Shenoy : Yes, I can speak on that. I'm one of the co-founders of [inaudible] and I'm on the board of directors of SarasCare. I can give my own experience. When I first came into Australia, I had to start from much below my experience level, and it took me a while to understand the contextualisation of skills within Australia. Even for my wife—she's a skilled engineer and— Senator ANANDA-RAJAH: We've lost connection. Mr Shenoy : [Inaudible] that volunteering for a charity is your entry into the job market in Australia. And what we do in— CHAIR: We just lost you again. Senator ANANDA-RAJAH: Chair, we might need to move on. I think this is going to be problematic, just because we're short of time. Mr Gupta, in your very nice submission you referenced the CRANE filter. I'm keen on hearing about the experience the communities have. You did cite a study here of 12,000 job applications that were filtered using AI and basically the discrimination that is applied. With increasing numbers of companies using AI to screen CVs, I'm interested to know what your view is and concerns are around this. We did hear from Jobs and Skills Australia. They were largely silent on doing any work in this area. I'm interested to know whether you think we need to be looking into this— Mr Gupta : Absolutely. Senator ANANDA-RAJAH: given that there are already enough barriers to entry into employment for the community and for many Australians for that matter. Mr Gupta : Thank you for the question, Senator, because this is really the crux of the matter. We know the issues. People can have one different feature, and that is enough to keep them from being productive in Australia. And we know that. The study that I quoted is one of very, very few studies that have been done. I think that we need to do a lot more studies. Now even people who are born in Australia can look different, and we know that their experiences can vary very differently just based on whether they have a different name or they have retained a feature that we may not have seen or we may not have observed of the region they were born in. If they're born in a poorer suburb, even that can be a very big disadvantage. I would really like to see some kind of research done on that from a productivity point of view. But, for someone who is in Australia and going to make their life and career in Australia, I think we need to have all the avenues for them to be as productive as they can be. At the end of the day, we are only 27 million people, with about 15 million in the workforce. We cannot afford to lose people to our own internal biases. There is a great opportunity to do that. If the Senate can mandate some kind of research, it would be really, really nice. We have, for example, ABS data. Can we ask a question about what people's lived experience is on these matters—just adding a column in that or adding a section in that and asking people about their lived experiences? What do they think about why they are not getting a job? If 10 people have graduated with an engineering degree, what kind of people are getting a job? Why is it that they are getting a job? Are they lucky to be in a certain region, or are they unlucky to have a certain feature that they carry? Senator ANANDA-RAJAH: Do you think that should be a recommendation that we look at—additional research into AI and job recruitment? Mr Gupta : I don't think it's to do with AI, because AI will do what the people who are designing it are going to do. In fact, what happens is that, if AI becomes biased, it can be very easily traced back. The problem is human bias, which cannot be traced back. If someone is doing a blind recruitment, their biases will never be noted, because the decision has been done and we'll never know why a decision was taken and the way it was taken. And we see that at a community level, whether we run a charity or we do an event: when a grant application happens, we don't know why the grant is given to some and not given to the others. There's no transparency. If we ask a question, we are fearful that that question will be used against us. The system itself will think that we are taking a stand. So I know a lot of people who are just choosing to be silent. CHAIR: Thanks very much. I think one of the things that's often underrecognised by politicians is that often there'll be a lot of cross-border trade between a diaspora group and the country that they may have come from, their parents came from, their grandparents came from or whatever. There could be a higher chance of a cultural connection which drives a business opportunity. I'm just wondering what you think are the major things holding back more cross-border trade with India. Mr Gupta : I think one of the things is that the systems are very bureaucrat-driven at the moment. So, as to people-to-people trade, even if we want to do it, we don't know the systems and we don't know the mechanisms that exist on which it can be done. There's a lot of food import that is happening at the moment. So pre-cooked meals are brought in. Australia exports a lot of lentils and raw food products at the moment, but that can very easily be expanded to mean a lot more. One of the things, from a farming and a regional point of view, is this. In Australia, again, we have some of the best food products in the world. But why are we then importing milk based products from other countries? And I'm not talking only about India, but any Third World country where the standards of the food product may be very doubtful. And can we enhance? So these are some of the triggers that we can bring into the system, where we could say: 'If you're importing food, make sure that it meets Australian standards,' so that there are a lot more checks. And bring the diaspora into those food tastings and food testing, as an example. The food trade is one, because of regional Australia, but it can be done with other trades as well. We, Little India Traders Association, host delegations from overseas. We would love to send a delegation overseas. We would love to have city-to-city trade. We know that what is a low barrier within India—India is such a large country, but where do you take a delegation, for example, from Bendigo, which is an equivalent? What is produced in Bendigo or Ballarat, or in Melbourne's CBD, that can be exported? It would be great if some kind of an opportunity could be created around bringing in those diaspora networks and using those skills. At the moment, I think it's more institutionalised, and, once it's institutionalised, you take it away from people, basically. At the moment, it's very top heavy. CHAIR: It sounds like there are opportunities there for some kind of informal 'matchmaking', or maybe some government-to-government—with business—engagement. Given that a lot of your members are small businesses, what impact has this latest 30 per cent capital gains tax had on your members? Is it something that's coming up? Is it something that might be inhibiting more investment? Is there any information on that? Mr Gupta : Can I get Ganesh, who is an accountant, to answer? He handles that kind of thing. CHAIR: Thank you. Mr Shenoy : [inaudible] Mr Komaragiri : A lot of the small businesses that I work with are staying put at the moment. They don't know what to do with that 30 per cent capital gains tax that has been introduced. I'll take you through some of the examples. Imagine a very small IGA store with four staff members, with no in-house legal, HR or payroll functions, run by a mum and a dad. They work there full time. They have set up their own trust. That's how they operate. Now that 30 per cent tax is coming into place. Earlier they used to distribute—being on payroll, and, as well, they used to distribute the tax as part of the trust. But now, with that 30 per cent tax being introduced as part of the trust, they are very confused. They don't know what to do. It's not clear what's going to happen in the future. So, with that 30 per cent minimum tax that has been imposed on them, they are planning to restructure. Some small business are talking about shutting down their business and going onto PAYG and working somewhere else. What that will do to productivity, especially in regional areas, is it will impact—very big time. On top of that, there is also the compliance cost that is being imposed on them. Every one of these problems is worse once you leave the city. Regional businesses face the same compliance obligations as city businesses, but they don't have many accountants and they don't have many lawyers. There are not even bank branches where they can go and do the work. It is a real threat to their survival in the small towns. The compliance pressure on regional businesses is more than that on those in the city, because the compliance costs don't ask whether you are in Toorak or in Tennant Creek; they land the same either way. The capacity to carry them isn't the same for all, so the gap is direct. This is the major drag on the economy—you can't just have one size fits all. CHAIR: Thank you very much for your answers today. We would appreciate it if responses to questions on notice could be provided by 12 August 2026. You go with our best wishes..