Increasing the number of immigrants in the Australian workforce could help fund the retirement of baby boomers for the next decade, KPMG partner Bernard Salt has said.
Australia currently takes 100,000 immigrants into the workforce each year but this number should be increased to 180,000, Salt told delegates at Russell Investment's Australian investment summit last week.
"The problem is over the last 60 years we have geared our entire economy around consumption, house construction and infrastructure development based on the view and fact that 200,000 people per year just materialise into the consumption of productive taxpaying phase of life," he said.
However, Salt said from 2011 this figure will drop from 200,000 to 100,000 and then plunge further to 50,000.
"We are at a fork in the road. We can take the high road or we can take the low road. The low road is easy - it's 100,000 migrants per year. Or we can take the high road and that is taking on 180,000 migrants per year," he said.
"The reason why you would want 180,000 migrants per year is because it is our 'get out of jail free card' - drag them in in their 20s, they go straight to the workforce, they pay tax, they don't get sick, they don't want an age pension and they pay tax for 40 years.
"They are productive taxpayers. They are export tax to fund the retirement of the baby boomers from the next decade on."
