Australia is suffering a skilled worker shortage.
The world’s media is now focusing on the great migrant debate in Australia as both parties battle it out to win votes with just a few days to the general election.
Australian politics is one of contradiction and confusion. On the one hand, both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott have dismissed Kevin Rudd’s plans for a big Australia and both have announced that they are to curb immigration flow to Australia, yet both support the baby bonuses that encourages Australians to have more children. So on the one hand they say that the population of Australia is growing too much and that it’s largely the fault of the immigrants, but on the other they acknowledge a need to populate Australia for the benefit of an ageing population and the growing economy.
Tony Abbott has pledged to turn back boats containing asylum seekers and process all refugees in offshore detention centres, re-opening some that have been closed such as the one on Nauru Island. He also wants a return to Temporary Protection Visas and says that under his party, immigration flow will be capped at 170,000 per year.
Julia Gillard’s party claim that changes to immigration policies have already seen a decrease in immigration figures. Tony Burke, the newly appointed Minister for Sustainable Population, claims that migrant numbers have already been cut back to 230,000 and by the year 2011/12 they will be cut down to 145,000 – much less than Tony Abbott’s predicted number. At the moment immigration numbers stand at 300,000 per year.
But whilst the parties have been competing with each other over who is the toughest on immigration, Australian businesses have been fearing the worst. The chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Western Australia, James Pearson, has told the BBC: “We’re (Australia) one of the new parts of the developed world which is really crying out for new, skilled workers.”
“The real danger to Western Australia, and the Australian economy more broadly, is that if we can’t fill the jobs that are being created, then some projects will be delayed, some may not even go ahead and all of the knock-on effects that ripple through the economy will therefore be lost.”
The mining boom is predicted to create around 500,000 new jobs in Western Australia and there is already a skills deficit in the agricultural industry with Denita Wawn from the National Farmers’ Federation warning of a shortage of around 100,000 workers over the next five years.
Yet with both the leading political parties standing firm in their commitments to cut back levels of immigration in Australia, it appears that the pleas of the business industry are falling on deaf ears. Australia has weathered the economic storm that has battered the rest of the developed world, it remains to be seen whether or not it can still continue to grow its economy in the face of a severe cap on skilled migrants.
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