SYDNEY: Australia is considering issuing special visas to “guest workers” from Asia and the Pacific to counter a chronic labour shortage, despite concerns the plan threatens to undermine the nation’s egalitarian ethos.
A lack of workers has left construction companies unable to bid for projects and farmers watching fruit rot on their trees while the skills shortage threatens to push up wages, fuel inflation and stall economic growth.
Prime Minister John Howard has voiced support for increasing immigration from about 120,000 annually to a one-off 140,000 to counter a shortage in skilled workers “if there is an economic need”.
But another “guest workers” scheme to grant foreigners short-term visas to work as low-skilled workers is also being considered.
This is despite the idea being slammed by Treasurer Peter Costello as “against the national ethos”.
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has stressed that if foreigners were granted “guest worker” visas it would not be a repeat of a practice ruled out a century ago under which Pacific Islanders were used as indentured labour in northern Australia.
“I think we should always be open to these sorts of ideas,” Vanstone said last week of the suggestion.
“But at the same time I’ve also said you have to make sure if you were to do something like that, that the terms and conditions were the same as Australian workers. There’s no way we’d be interested in bringing in cheap labour for example.”
Another problem would be ensuring that “people go back”, said Vanstone, who is responsible for overseeing the conservative government’s tough immigration laws which call for the mandatory, unlimited detention of illegal immigrants including children.
Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands have lobbied for the new visa category to assist them build their economies amid suggestions wage remittances from such guest workers could ease the Pacific nations’ reliance on Australian aid.
With unemployment at a 28-year low of 5.1 per cent, Australian industry has urged the government to introduce guest-workers to fill positions in manufacturing, industry and agriculture.
“We are not pressing for guest workers to come out here as second-class workers,” said chief executive of national employer body the Australian Industry Group, Heather Ridout.
“(But) given the shortage we have, particularly in the construction industry and the manufacturing sectors it would be appropriate to have some short-term visa flexibility.”
Ridout’s group wants the foreign workers to be given the same working conditions and benefits as local workers but says they need to arrive soon as labour shortages have intensified over the past 12 months due to a construction boom and a reduction in the number of people learning a trade.
“They (the shortages) are holding up projects, there are companies who aren’t bidding for projects because they don’t think they will get the labour,” she said.
Chief executive of the Sunraysia Mallee Economic Development Board in Victoria’s fruit-picking heartland of Mildura, Andrew Millen, has been lobbying the government for a pilot project to bring in workers from China on temporary visas.—AFP
