Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar has denied Australia “has a migration problem” as business pleads with the Anthony Albanese not to restrict access to working holiday visa holders.A coalition of industry bodies including the Tourism and Transport Forum, National Farmers’ Federation, and Accommodation Australia travelled to Canberra on Thursday to call on the government to restore access to working holiday makers.The bodies claim recent changes to the Working Holiday Maker program have resulted in some visas being processed more slowly, while others have been paused for 24 partner countries.Addressing the media, Mr McKellar said any “arbitrary” target for immigration, including the number of working holiday visa holders, would be “shortsighted” and “end up constraining the Australian economy”.“We don’t have a migration problem in Australia,” Mr McKellar said. “We have a housing crisis and we have skills shortages. Those are the problems that we’ve got to address. “We won’t address that through shortsighted approaches that just cause more damage to the Australian economy. “Those are red lines for business.”Mr McKellar is urging for a “reset” in the migration debate, which has become increasingly focused on net overseas migration (NOM).That figure captures a wide breadth of visa holders, including temporary workers. Anyone counted by NOM needs to have spent 12 months in Australia over a 16-month period. The Albanese government forecasts NOM will fall to 225,000 in the 2027-28 financial year, although it has long exceeded targets.Pauline Hanson has called for NOM to be reduced to 130,000, though it remains unclear whether that figure includes working visa types relied upon heavily by some industries, including the PALM Pacific workers scheme.One Nation MP David Farley last month conceded the party’s overall migration target would be similar to Labor’s when factoring in those visa types. Senator Hanson later sought to clarify Mr Farley’s claim. “We think there needs to be a reset in the migration debate,” Mr McKellar said of the business sector. “It’s got to be focused on what are our fundamental skills needs, how do we grow the Australian economy. “It’s heading in the wrong direction if we are focusing on arbitrary targets that are pulled from nowhere and that don’t recognise the realities and the needs of the Australian economy.”South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas warned the Australian economy faced “a range of challenges”.“Clearly though, one of them is demographics,” he told ABC Radio National.“We’ve got an ageing population and that is going to result in an ever-increasing financial burden on budgets, both federally but also at a state level, as we seek to support older people who are going to retirement and require more services from the state.”With Australia only a few years away from having more people over the age of 65 then under the age of 15, the nation would no longer be replacing its workforce “at the pace that is required in order to be able to sustain our standard of living”.“One of the ways we can address that, of course, is having a well-calibrated and thought-through migration program,” Mr Malinauskas said.Asked about concerns about the impact of migration on housing, Mr Malinauskas said: “We need to explain that Australia doesn’t really have a migration crisis so much as a housing crisis. “If we have a housing crisis, we would do well to focus our skills policy on making sure that we’re bringing in the very workers that we require in the housing construction industry.“Setting arbitrary numbers that just become a target for a target’s sake I think is flawed because what you then see is if you set a net overseas migration number of 100,000 or 200,000, whatever that number is, you start curtailing migration from various areas to suit a specific numerical purpose. “Rather, what I would see is us bringing in the numbers of people that we need in this country to fulfil the skills requirements that we’ve got before us.”Read related topics:Anthony Albanese