AUSTRALIA: No Pacific Islands guest workers scheme
Updated
Australia has again ruled out introducing a Pacific Island guest workers scheme. This follows yet another call for Pacific islanders to be allowed to take up seasonal jobs in Australia. The Prime Minister of Solomon Islands, Doctor Derik Sikua raised the issue last week while visiting Australia but the call has been dismissed - for the time being. However, the World Bank predicts that it's just a matter of time before the Australian Government will be forced to consider a regional employment scheme.
Presenter: Barbara Heggen
Speakers: Manjula Luthria, Senior Economist with the World Bank; Dick Eade, Manpower Vanuatu Associates; Andrew Millen, CEO Sunraysia Mallee Economic Development Board
HEGGEN: Pacific Island nations have been pushing Australian Government's for some years to introduce a guest worker program, where unskilled workers enter the country on short term visas to fill jobs that Australians are either unable or not prepared to take up. The idea was resisted under the prime ministership of John Howard, and the new regime of Kevin Rudd has also said that there are no plans to introduce such a scheme. However, the Labor Government has said that the position could change pending a review of a New Zealand seasonal workers scheme, as time frame or details of whose actually conducting that review have not been revealed.
Dick Eade is the director of Manpower Vanuatu Associates, a labour recruitment firm that's been providing workers for the New Zealand scheme. He says that so far it's been a win-win situation.
EADE: Well for the New Zealand farmers, a lot of this work has been done by backpackers and the backpackers are there for a few weeks and then they pack off and go. So they finish up training people three or four times a year for the same job, whereas the Ni-Vanuatu people are down there for the season. They train them once and away they go. And then of course the next season they have the same workers back, they don't have to retrain them, they know the ropes, they know the rules and they're known by the farmers as to be reliable workers, not troublemakers. So it's a plus for the New Zealand farmer.
From the Vanuatu side, these guys go down there and they save between one and a half and three year of minimum wages in savings they bring back to the country. So that's a huge benefit and it's all their money. Nobody can tell them how to spend it. And as well as that, the people moving out of here to go and work in New Zealand, some of them already have jobs. They quit their jobs, so they leave a job vacuum here, so that means more people who are not employed currently can move into the work force here.
HEGGEN: Andrew Millen is the CEO of the Sunraysia Mallee Economic Development Board in regional Australia. He says that at the very least the Australian Government should set up a pilot guest worker scheme for the Pacific region.
MILLEN: There's a series of things which I would believe the government should look into. Now it needs to look at pay scales, tax scales, the appropriate conditions for any worker to work either with accommodation and or on farm, because you've got health and safety issues also. And I think the unions have a very large area to play in it being fair, so that jobs are not being given to people that are being exploited. And I think a pilot program can work out all the issues that would relate to a what we would call a farm skilled worker or an itinerate worker around the country.
The Canadians have been doing it since the 1960s, and why isn't Australia at least researching and being involved in at least a pilot to see whether it works within our country.
HEGGEN: Manula Luthria, a senior economist with the World Bank has been involved on the ground with the New Zealand guest workers scheme.
Last year, 400 workers were employed to pick fruit, and the scheme has been so successful that employers are now requesting 5,000 workers this year from Vanuatu, Kiribatis, Samoa and Tuvalu. She says the benefits are simply to compelling to ignore, and that Australia's ageing population will become a crucial factor in the decisionmaking process.
LUTHRIA: Compelling factors are is that it's extremely important to insure social and economic viability and stability of the region, and so compelling reasons for the Pacific are that they do have excess labour. For Australia yes, the bottom line is that there are worker shortages now in labour intensive jobs, but not to far down the road as you mentioned, the population does age, the workers coming into the work force begin to dwindle off and the demand for labour intensive services is going to go up way more than the supply is and that's going to create a real crisis.
