‘Accountants are very critical’: Recruiter reacts to Pauline Hanson’s ‘no more tax accountants’ jibe

Viney was responding to comments recently made by One Nation leader senator Pauline Hanson at the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s business leader’s summit in Canberra in reference to the party’s proposal to slash immigration by 750,000 places over three years, including cuts to families of skilled migrants and international students.

It proposes to cap permanent and temporary visas at 130,000 per year after temporarily driving net overseas migration to negative levels.

“No more Uber drivers, no more tax accountants and all this rest of it that we don’t need,” Hanson told the summit.

But she said One Nation would not prevent any business that requires skilled labour from coming to Australia.

In a LinkedIn post, Viney took issue with Hanson lumping tax accountants with Uber drivers, and invited Hanson to spend a week trying to recruit accountants in Perth.

“Tax accountants aren’t a ‘nice to have’. They’re the ones keeping small businesses compliant,” he said.

He outlined several issues, including that most firms he works with have at least one tax/business services role they cannot fill, while many firms are leaning on offshore teams due to a scarcity of skilled candidates here.

Many accountants he places have come to Australia on a skilled visa and are now running client portfolios, reviewing work, and training juniors, he said.

“Accountants are critical at the moment for so many things. I’ve been recruiting tax accountants for larger firms and smaller boutiques for over a decade. I think everyone currently sees resourcing good accountants as one of their biggest challenges,” Viney told Accountants Daily.

Viney attributed this to a shortage of new graduates, as well as competition between public practice tax accountants and the commercial market, as many accountants who begin in public practice accounting firms move to in-house roles.

Amid this shortage of accountants, Viney observed that accountants are facing a significant influx of work, but they have had to refuse it due to the lack of resources.

“Most firms would be crying out for either advanced, intermediate, or senior accountants at the moment and it’s very hard to find them,” he said.

“I’m always in the market trying everything to find good accountants and speak to them about what their career opportunities are, and network with people I know and constantly check in on them to see if there’s an ideal opportunity they would be interested in. There’s a lack of volume of experienced accountants who are looking to make a move.”

Viney said that over 60 per cent of the candidates he has placed over the last two to three years have been migrants.

“If it weren’t for those candidates, there would have been a real shortfall,” he said.

“If you were to take out accountants that were migrants from the market over the last few years, it would’ve been a lot more challenging to find people that haven’t come from overseas. Taking away this path, which opens doors to finding good candidates, would probably not be the best idea.

“Accountants should be a priority skilled area given there’s a talent gap. Taking away one potential element that feeds the talent pool would probably not be the best thing from my perspective.

‘Out of touch’ and ‘hilarious’

Heaney Business Group director Gemma Heaney said Hanson’s comments were “out of touch” even as practitioners are struggling to recruit experienced accountants and are offshoring functions.

“I thought the comment was particularly hilarious because every single other practitioner I know struggles with recruitment. I don’t know what Pauline Hanson thinks we’re going to do about the problem if we’re not going to be bringing in more people to help fill the accounting roles,” Heaney said.

“How else is this work going to get done, other than by potentially reducing complexity in our tax system, which is certainly not happening.”

Heaney said she resorted to offshoring in February this year and has a team of four staff in India after delaying the move for many years, as she would have preferred to recruit local staff.

“I think when so much of a country has to offshore its tax work to various countries overseas, it’s a pretty clear indicator that they need to look at why it’s so complex,” Heaney said.

Body slams One Nation super proposal

One Nation has also proposed a policy that would give Australians early access to their superannuation savings. The Super Pay Boost would allow people paying rent or a mortgage the choice to divert a quarter of their superannuation (or 3 per cent) to their take-home pay for up to three years.

The Super Members Council vehemently opposed the proposed policy, arguing that it would turn super into an ATM, drive up inflation, leave everyone with a higher tax bill, and make everyone poorer in retirement.

“This policy would actually hurt battling Australians – not help them – by driving inflation and interest rates higher and making it even harder for households to make ends meet,” the council’s CEO, Misha Schubert, said.