Warringah MP Zali Steggall said the event was shaping up to be a "big PR exercise" for Labor, arguing that the Albanese government should have used a royal commission-style inquiry to collect feedback and data before staging a summit.

The crossbench has been offered three seats at the summit on Thursday and Friday, which the government wants to use to address economic handbrakes including workforce shortages and falling real wages.

Much of the debate ahead of the event has focused on two solutions - boosting Australia's annual migration intake and simplifying the bargaining system.

North Sydney MP Kylea Tink was concerned about the focus on bargaining, which she argued wasn't the biggest problem which needed to be fixed.

"My key message around this is this problem is much more challenging than one single solution - and bargaining is not going to solve it," she said.

She said the debate needed to encompass everything from housing affordability, to luring workers to Australia and removing barriers which prevented highly-qualified migrants from working in their chosen profession after they arrived.

Ms Tink said the federal government must steer a national approach to tackling workforce shortages, as she expressed alarm at a Victorian government plan to pay the university fees of aspiring nurses and midwives to help ease workforce pressures in its state's health system.

"I think that's really counterproductive to a healthy national future and to me that reflects the worst of the downside of our federated model," she said.

"You know, we can't have the states competing against each other for talent and competency. We need to address this as a nation.

"We need federal leadership when it comes to the tertiary structure, and having states move ahead of that federal leadership creates a problem for us as a nation."

Asked at the National Press Club if he would consider the idea at a federal level, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the government had its own suite of policies to address skills shortages, including offering 450,000 free-free TAFE places and an extra 20,000 university positions in areas of need.

"The different levels of government have to pull the levers that are available to them," he said.

Ms Steggall agreed that the wages debate, which the Australian Council of Trade Unions is leading, along with the Business Council of Australia, was overshadowing the summit.

The government has crammed more than a dozen topics onto the summit's agenda, meaning major subjects such equal opportunities and pay for women have been allocated just one hour.

Ms Steggall was sceptical about how much could be achieved during the two-day event.

She said her preference would have been for the government to use a royal commission-style inquiry to collate feedback and data from across various sectors, then hold a summit to discuss the key proposals.

"It [the summit] is going to expose more questions than provide answers and you can probably pursue an inquiry on each of the individual topics of each session," she said.

Wentworth MP Allegra Spender wanted a greater focus on what governments could do to boost productivity, which included removing red tape and other barriers.

She also wanted more debate on measures to encourage innovation, including in the clear energy space.