Australian technology industry figures have condemned Prime Minister Julia Gillard for ''desperate vote mongering'' over ''outrageous'' comments she made accusing IT firms of abusing the skilled migration scheme.
In a speech on Thursday, Ms Gillard accused IT firms of rorting the scheme at the expense of Australian workers.
''Fact: there is clear evidence that in some growing sectors, importing workers on 457 visas is a substitute for spreading important economic opportunity to Australian working people,'' she said.
''It is just not acceptable that information technology jobs, the quintessential jobs of the future, the very opportunities being created by the digital economy, precisely where the big picture is for our kids, should be such a big area of imported skills.''
The 457 visas are given to foreign workers to work temporarily in Australia and, over the past seven months, 5800 overseas workers arrived to work in the IT sector, while there were 4500 IT graduates in 2011.
But the co-founder of Sydney-based global enterprise software company Atlassian, Mike Cannon-Brookes, said his firm would love to hire more Australians but ''we don't have the scale or scope of talent here''.
Mr Cannon-Brookes said the company was bringing in some of the best talent in the world from companies such as Microsoft, Facebook and Google, and ''who on earth do we want to immigrate to Australia more than these folks?''
Matt Barrie, chief executive of Freelancer.com, who has been campaigning for better IT education in Australia for some time, described the Prime Minister's comments as ''absolutely outrageous'' and ''desperate vote mongering''.
''There wouldn't be an IT industry in Australia if it wasn't for the fact that we could draw from overseas labour,'' he said.
Meanwhile, NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell said the NSW health system would ''crumble'' without the contribution of people working on 457 visas while federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott waded in during question time, saying: ''This is a Prime Minister who can't stop the boats, so what's she doing? She wants to stop the brains from coming to Australia.''
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