Australia is planning its biggest global recruitment drive since the ”£10 pom” campaign of the 1950s by trying to lure 20 000 skilled workers to the country with promises of shorter hours, a better climate and a lower cost of living.
The government says there are shortages in many areas — from doctors to carpenters — and that recruiting from abroad is the only way of shoring up key industries.
The chronic problems have, in part, been caused by an ageing population and the fact that almost one million skilled workers have left the country to work overseas.
Europe is regarded as an important potential recruiting ground, and the immigration department is planning a comprehensive drive that will include advertisements and exhibitions that will play up the advantages of moving from the gloom of the north to the sun down under.
Australian immigration officials will talk up Australia’s laid-back culture in the exhibitions, which will take place in London, Amsterdam and Berlin next month and in October.
Individual companies are providing extra incentives such as cars, laptops and more flexible working hours.
The government is considering a further recruitment drive next year in Los Angeles, Bangkok, Seoul and Manila.
But some politicians have compared the invitation to new workers with the government’s hardline attitude to asylum seekers.
Greg Barns, a former political adviser and member of the Australian Democrats, said that Prime Minister John Howard’s government was missing a chance to build Australia’s skills and population base by ignoring the world’s estimated 17-million refugees and asylum seekers.
Nevertheless, the government is pressing on, and Abul Rizvi, the acting deputy secretary of the immigration department, said the campaign echoed the post-war drive for skilled migrants. ”If you think about what we did in the 1950s and the impact that had on Australia, well, we’re doing it again,” he said.
That scheme saw more than one million Britons emigrate to Australia under various assisted migration schemes. If prospective migrants could raise the £10 for their fare, the government paid the rest.
But if they decided to return home within two years, they had to pay the £10 back and raise their own travel costs.
Under the current programme, the biggest jump in the migration quota since the 1970s, the government will offer migrants four-year employer or state-sponsored migration, with the option to stay on permanently.
The Australian army hopes to recruit up to 300 British soldiers to fill its dwindling ranks at next month’s London exhibition, while the South Australian government is seeking medical professionals willing to work in rural hospitals. More than 100 former British police officers are pounding the pavement in South Australia after a similar recruitment drive by the state government earlier this year.
”We’re sending a group of senior medical officers to London with the specific mission — go and recruit some doctors,” said Mike Rann, South Australia’s Labour premier.
Salaries for trainee doctors in Australia start at £19 000 and rise to £49 000.
Workers on large infrastructure projects, particularly engineers, are also highly sought after following years of underinvestment which resulted in fewer apprentices being trained in Australia.
However, regional employment groups believe the plan will not go far enough to fill job vacancies in rural Australia. ”Throughout rural and regional Australia there is a desperate shortage of skills and of people,” said Arthur Blewitt, chairperson of the Agrifood Industry Skills Council.
Kim Beazley, Australia’s Labour opposition leader, has also called for the estimated 900 000 Australian expatriates working overseas to return home or forge closer investment and trade links. — Â