Former Labor MP and now Tourism Accommodation Australia chairman, Martin Ferguson, has called on Australia to ramp-up its intake of foreign workers in order to see-off an imminent labour shortage in the tourism industry. From The Canberra Times:
A Deloitte labour force report, released Wednesday, reveals an extra 123,000 jobs would be required within five years to meet the demands of the rapidly growing sector…
Tourism Accommodation Australia’s chairman Mr Ferguson said the findings identified an urgent need for a major lift in local recruitment, and a relaxation of temporary skilled migration rules in the nation’s 417 and 457 visa schemes.
“With such an unprecedented pipeline of new hotel development and with record international demand, it will be important for governments to be flexible to allow temporary skilled workers when and where they are most needed,” he said.
Seriously, how low can policy making in Australia sink? Whenever there is the whiff of a potential “skills shortage” somewhere, the first policy of choice is to import a bunch of foreign workers.
Meanwhile, youth unemployment remains stuck at chronically high levels:
And youth underemployment is at all time highs:
Worse, the economy is facing the loss of tens-of-thousands of jobs across the resources and manufacturing sectors as mining investment retraces from all-time highs and the car industry closes.
Why not redirect some of these surplus workers to the tourism industry? It’s not like tourism jobs are highly skilled and cannot easily be filled by locals.
Finally, Ferguson’s shortage claim flies in the face of the Department of Employment’s latest skills shortages report, which revealed that skills shortages across the economy have all but vanished, with “more than enough applicants with relevant qualifications, or appropriate skills and experience, for vacancies in almost every occupation”. It also noted that “in 2014-15, there was an average of 13.6 applicants for each skilled vacancy (15.8 for professions and 12.1 for technicians and trades), of whom an average of 2.2 were considered by employers to be suitable”.
In short, the case for the large scale importation of foreign workers is already thin and will only get thinner in the years ahead.
Ferguson’s vested interest plea disgraces his history with the labour movement and should be ignored by all and sundry.
