Most of the participants in the skills shortage forum agreed that bringing skilled workers into Australia from overseas was an essential part of the solution.
“We can’t avoid the need for skilled migration,” Education and Training Minister Alan Carpenter said.
“First of all your focus should be on providing opportunities for home-grown talent, but we’re in a situation where we have to look beyond that.”
He said it was important to focus on the terms and conditions applying to skilled migrants, to avoid exploitation.
St John of God Health care national chief executive Dr Michael Stanford said local training needed to increase but there was a long lead time before people were ready to join the workforce. For nurses this would be at least four years and for specialist doctors it could be as much as 12 years.
“In the short term we don’t think there is an alternative to some overseas recruitment,” Dr Stanford said.
“That has been happening for doctors already and will have to happen for a period of time until there is enough who are graduating.”
Skilled Engineering, like many labour hire firms, is bringing in experienced tradesmen to fill gaps in the local market.
It has sponsored 40 tradesmen from Ireland, has a commitment for 100, and has also sponsored some South Africans.
“Sponsoring is an event you don’t take lightly,” Skilled’s general manager WA, Chris Chalwell, said.
“You take responsibility for them for four years, come hell or high water.”
He said Skilled accepted its long-term commitment and was not bringing in workers to plug short-term gaps.
Chamber of Minerals & Energy director Reg Howard-Smith said local employers and universities were looking to India to address their problems.
“Companies in Western Australia today are going to India and recruiting graduates because you can’t get graduates [here],” he told the forum.
Mr Howard-Smith said Indian technical institutes were very highly regarded, particularly in the field of mining engineering.
However, a problem was that the Federal Immigration Department seemed to be out of touch.
“Immigration, as of today, doesn’t recognise any of the areas that are in short supply in the resources industry as being in short supply,” he said.
“We need to work with people at immigration on that.”
Mr Howard-Smith said the chamber was also working to bring Indian graduates to Australian universities to boost the viability of faculties such as metallurgy.
“There is an abundance of very highly qualified students in India,” he said.
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union State secretary Jock Ferguson put a contrary view to the forum, saying he had “great concerns” about migration.
“We see that as very dangerous,” he said.
“There are people out there, labour hire companies in particular, who are taking advantage of this skills shortage, this perception that it’s a disaster.
“If we open the floodgates and bring people in from offshore, then nobody will take any responsibility for training the youth of Western Australia.”
Mr Ferguson claimed the Federal Government was giving out ‘457’ visas too easily.
“We are not going to agree that employers bring in people from offshore under 457 visas when they don’t take any other responsibility for training,” Mr Ferguson said.
He called on government to pursue other options with more vigour.
“There has to be a lot more done before we even consider that.”
