Pacific workers to help fruit crisis
Australia eases visa rules for Qatari students |
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4 September, 2008
DOHA • The prospects of students from Qatar entering Australia to pursue higher studies have distinctly brightened following changes to the Australian student visa Assessment Levels (ALs) which came into effect from Monday.
As part of the changes, the immigration risk of 43 countries has been lowered, including Qatar, meaning they now have to provide less evidence to support their Australian student visa application. Students from Qatar, as result of having been shifted to the lowest of the five possible levels of immigration risk category, are now also eligible to make online applications offshore.
The changes mean students from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and 40 other countries have a better chance of being granted a visa for Australia. Legislative changes made by the Australian government mean the ALs in 52 countries have been amended. All applications for a student visa from nationals in these countries are now subject to the amendments. However, applications which were already being processed before the date will not be affected by the changes.
Those who have received a setback are those from India, Jordan, Zimbabwe, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Romania, who now have to furnish extra evidence proving their application is legitimate and they have the capacity to support themselves financially. Although the risk level for students from Iran had not been raised, the Iranian government had been warned this could take place if negative trends continued.
Australia has emerged as a major study destination with 392,000 international students enrolled in Australian institutions, a 20 percent increase over the year before. Australia is likely to gain popularity over current hot spots like London after the untoward incident of a Qatari youth getting slained in UK.
- Rabin Gupta, The Peninsula
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Australia will face crippling shortage of IT professionals |
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1 September, 2008
SYDNEY: Australia is likely to face a crippling shortage in information technology professionals unless policies are changed, a new study has found.
A report by Australian Computer Society (ACS) released last week showed the shortage could grow by 29 per cent by 2010 to over 14,500 full-time positions. This could increase to over 25,000 by 2020.
"Even using the most optimistic forecasts for levels of domestic graduates and of migration into Australia, IT skills shortages will continue or get worse at least until 2012," said John Atkinson, who heads Charles Stuart University's (CSU) School of Business and Information Technology.
"This is a worrying trend considering the strategic importance of IT sector to the Australian economy. According to 2006 data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, IT is one of the main contributors to productivity gains in all sectors of the Australian economy.
"It is also economically more significant than agriculture, defence, education and mining, with over five percent of Australia's full-time professionals and technicians employed in ICT," he added.
- The Economic Times
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Australia: Growers laud visa scheme |
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1 September, 2008
Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area citrus growers are delighted an overseas guest worker visa scheme will be trialled locally to let them employ Pacific Islanders to fill labour shortages during the coming summer harvest.
The Federal Government’s plan was welcomed by Griffith and District Citrus Growers secretary, Louis Sartor, who has been lobbying the government for years to help solve local labour problems.
Mr Sartor said citrus growers were not seeking cheap labour, but wanted reliable workers, especially at harvest when pickers were scarce.
Federal Agriculture Minister, Tony Burke, said the scheme would not be a cheap option as it could cost more than employing locals.
The National Farmers Federation backs the scheme, with the first of the seasonal workers expected later this year.
Griffith orchardist, Sue Brighenti, Sumar Produce, would happily pay the scheme’s required rates if she could find 30 to 40 workers, given last year’s fruit picker shortage cost her company $100,000.
“We had a whole paddock of mandarins left on the trees because we were picking navel oranges at the same time and couldn’t get to them,” she said.
Backpackers filled some of the shortages but Mrs Brighenti said they “come and go with no chance to get skilled up”.
Growers must prove there are no local workers available, then meet Australian work standards, including pay rates, pay half the cost of a return airfare, and meet other establishment costs.
Mrs Brighenti said a good picker could harvest four times the fruit of an unskilled picker in a day.
Griffith’s horticulture industry is worth $500 million and needs reliable labour to grow further.
NSW Farmers Association president, Jock Laurie, wants a similar program expanded to help other regional areas.
“Shed staff for shearing are also becoming harder to find,” he said.
NSW Farmers wants to sit down with the federal Coalition parties who opposed the scheme and find out what their grievances were.
The Coalition criticised the Government for rushing the scheme and only opening it to four Pacific nations, although Federal Member for Riverina, Kay Hull, has disagreed with her colleagues and said she would do the right thing for struggling fruit growers.
- Fresh Plaza
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Commerce Queensland welcomes skilled migrants push |
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1 September, 2008
Commerce Queensland says Queensland's economy is being constrained by the skills shortage.
It has welcomed the State Government's push to take advantage of the economic downturn in the United States by advertising to convince skilled migrants there to relocate to Queensland.
Commerce Queensland president Beatrice Booth says the Government and the private sector have to address the skills shortage.
"Over the next few years we're going to experience a major shortage of skills, regardless of the economic climate, then I think it's a great idea," she said.
"We need experienced people, we need people with a good command of English and obviously the Americans have a very similar work ethic to Australians."
- ABC News
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Australia rethinks Snoop Dogg visa approval |
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27 August, 2008
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia is re-thinking a decision to give gangsta rapper Snoop Dogg a visa after public complaints that he should not tour in October in a double act with Ice Cube, an immigration official said on Tuesday.
Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Cordozar Calvin Broadus Jr., was refused permission to even apply for a visa to enter Australia in 2007 because of his criminal record, sinking plans for him to co-host the MTV Australia Video Music Awards.
But immigration officials this week cleared the way for an October tour visit, until a spate of public complaints from Australian victims of crime groups on Tuesday.
"As a result of public concern and interest, the department has decided that in fact we will be undertaking a more thorough assessment of Mr Broadus' character," a senior immigration official told Reuters.
The decision does not mean Snoop Dogg will again be barred from Australia, but he could be counseled before arrival and given strict behavior rules to abide by while in the country.
Snoop Dogg was first barred by Australia's former conservative government, which lost power last year to the centre-left Labor government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Labor has steadily softened tough immigration laws while in power.
Critics say Snoop Dogg's lyrics are racist and sexist. The rapper has sold over 17 million records.
His criminal record counts several drugs and firearms charges since 1990, including a 1993 acquittal for murder. He has also been denied entry to Britain.
After learning of a change of heart by officials on barring the controversial rapper, Australian victims of crime groups complained to the government to have the decision overturned.
"Snoop Dogg trades in toxic messages of menace, violence, misogyny and lawlessness," Angela Conway, of the Australian Family Association, told the Herald Sun newspaper.
The immigration official said a fresh assessment of an approval for Snoop Dogg to apply for a visa -- clearing the way for a 17-day visit from October 21 -- had already begun.
"We've advised his tour promoter and he and Mr Broadus will have an opportunity to respond. We clearly will look at his criminal history," he said.
- Rob Taylor, Reuters
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Immigrants boost Australian economy |
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22 August, 2008
THE record immigration intake is delivering major economic benefits, according to research to be released today by Immigration Minister Chris Evans.
As the Rudd Government seeks to maintain community support for the highest immigration intake since the 1960s, Senator Evans will release Access Economics modelling that "dispels the myth that new migrants impose a huge impost on the taxpayer".
The modelling comes as the Government expands its temporary worker scheme to take in up to 2500 horticulture workers from four Pacific nations -- a move opposed by Brendan Nelson, who argues that unemployed Australians could take on the fruit-picking jobs.
The modelling shows the immigration intake of more than 171,000 in 2007-08 will result in an economic benefit of $610million in the first year, $965 million in the second year and a massive $1.5 billion after the migrants have spent 20 years in Australia.
The 2008-09 program, forecast at 203,000 places, is modelled to represent an even bigger bonus of $829 million in the first year and $1.8 billion by year 20.
The immigration program increased under the Howard government but has been boosted further by the Rudd Government as it seeks to fill labour shortages.
- Lenore Taylor, The Age
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457 visas being processed faster: Evans |
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21 August, 2008
Temporary visa applications to Australia are being processed faster and more efficiently since the setting up of three dedicated centres, Immigration Minister Senator Chris Evans says.
Accountants had called for restrictions on work visas to be eased to cope with demand in their profession.
However, Senator Evans said 81 per cent of all 457 visa holders were being employed in professional occupations and highly skilled jobs, including accounting.
"Earlier this year, I directed the department to clear a backlog of about 13,000 temporary skilled migration visa applications on hand since March, many of which were outside the acceptable standards for processing," Senator Evans said.
"Applications for temporary skilled visas are now being processed faster and more efficiently at three new dedicated Centres of Excellence established in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne to deal with increasing demand by Australian companies for overseas workers to meet skills shortages."
Immigration department data released last month shows that 110,570 visas were granted to temporary skilled workers and their dependents in 2007-08, up from 87,310 in 2006-07.
Senator Evans noted that accountancy was the top occupation for the permanent skilled migration program - averaging 9,000 to 10,000 places each year for the past three years.
Specialist recruitment firm Select Accountancy said it was crucial that 457 visa restrictions be eased to cope with demand for accountants and finance professionals.
Select general manager Asia Pacific Suzanne Boyd said employers were being forced to look abroad to fill positions, often left vacant as local talent was lured overseas where there is also a shortage of accounting and finance professionals.
"Employers in Australia have to cast a wider net to bring talent in - or back in - to the country," she said.
Smaller regional and suburban accounting firms were bearing the brunt of these skill shortages more than their multi-national counterparts, she said.
"A collective effort to attract and retain talent, particularly accounting and finance professionals in Australia, will help all employers and take some much needed pressure off the sector," she said.
High demand for accountants and a low supply of graduates is taking its toll on the industry.
The shortage is having a negative impact on 64 per cent of the profession with increased workload and stress the biggest impact on employees, according to the 2008 Vedior Asia Pacific employment trends survey.
More than 80 per cent of employers in the accounting and finance sector now use head hunting to find suitable people in a very tight talent pool.
The practice, once reserved for senior executives, is being used to source junior and mid-level staff.
- theage.com.au
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Australia's Rudd to Discuss Pacific Seasonal Farm Worker Plan |
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19 August, 2008
Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will tomorrow unveil a plan to allow season workers into the country in an effort to ease a labor shortage estimated to leave millions of dollars of produce rotting in farmers' fields.
Australia will follow New Zealand in the three-year pilot program, which will see some 2,500 visas being granted to workers from Kiribati, Tonga, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea to work in the fruit and vegetable industry for as long as seven months a year, the government said in a statement. Rudd will present the plan tomorrow when he attends the Pacific Islands summit.
Some A$700 million ($611 million) of fresh produce, including tomatoes and grapes, is left to rot because of a shortage of about 100,000 Australian horticulture workers, according to the government. The nation's 17 years of economic expansion has seen the jobless rate fall to a three-decade low.
``Domestic manpower cannot fill our labor needs,'' National Farmers Federation President David Crombie said in a telephone interview in Canberra today. ``The solution is sourcing temporary migrants from nearby Pacific Islands so they can get new skills and training.''
Employers will only be able to employ Pacific workers after they have made ``reasonable efforts'' to find Australians, Agriculture Minister Tony Burke said.
``Fresh Australian fruit and vegetables should be harvested for consumers to enjoy at home and overseas, not left in the field to go to waste,'' Burke said in an e-mailed statement. ``Pacific Island workers are not a cheap labor option. Employers will pay half of the return air fares, and cover establishment and pastoral care costs.''
Fruit, Vegetables
Australian horticulture is valued at about A$7 billion, according to the Farmers Federation. Exports, including fruit and vegetables, were worth A$950 million in 2007.
``We are finding it increasingly difficult to find workers and the product suffers,'' Ron Walker, who manages 120 hectares of orchards for Batlow Apples, which makes up 10 percent of Australian production, said from Tumut, 450 kilometers south-west of Sydney. ``This new scheme will make a huge difference for fruit and vegetable growers and for workers who want new skills.''
Rudd, 50, will also discuss the ``political and economic challenges'' across the region, climate change and restoring democracy in Fiji when he attends the Pacific Islands Forum in Niue, according to a statement on his Web Site.
Army chief Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama, who appointed himself Fiji's prime minister after overthrowing the government in a bloodless military coup in December 2006, is under pressure to hold elections by March 2009.
Along with Fiji, Australia and New Zealand, the forum includes Tonga, the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
- Gemma Daley, Bloomberg
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Foreign fly-in, fly-out deal on way: Reynolds |
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19 August, 2008
The construction union claims to have negotiated a flyin, fly-out roster allowing hundreds of foreign tradesmen to return to their home countries every few weeks from the Pluto project in the North-West.
Secretary Kevin Reynolds claims that under the deal, up to 1000 foreign tradesmen would be able to fly home for one week after every five or six weeks on the job.
The move is a big departure from traditional FIFO rosters in which mine workers return to Perth, or in some cases to the east coast, during their rest and recreation breaks.
But the union’s power to insist on the extraordinary change comes after new laws were introduced by the Labor Government in which companies must negotiate international labour agreements with unions and other stakeholders, giving them the power to formally object to applications if they are not satisfied with the proposed wages and conditions.
Unions would also have the right to object if the company could not prove that it had attempted to get local workers to fill the jobs.
Any objections would be considered by the Immigration Department when deciding whether to approve the application for foreign workers.
Mr Reynolds said the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union had struck the deal with Woodside recently, though some final details of the labour agreement were still being negotiated and it was yet to be formally lodged with the Immigration Department.
Mr Reynolds said he did not want masses of foreign workers in Australia because he believed they undermined local training opportunities, but he said it was important to ensure foreign workers on four-year work visas had the same rights to a family life as local workers.
He claimed the cost of a return ticket to Asia would be similar to a flight to the east coast, denying the move was an attempt to price the foreign workers out of the market.
“We don’t see any difference in flying back to the Philippines or to Auckland or to Townsville or to Perth. We don’t want to end up with a situation where workers don’t see their families for four years,” Mr Reynolds said.
Mining giant Woodside would not confirm or deny Mr Reynolds’ claims before the labour agreement had been lodged with the Immigration Department. It is understood that the workers would be employed by Leighton and other contractors on the project. The mass influx of foreign workers on major resource projects is becoming a trend amid the continuing skills shortage. CITIC Mining said up to a quarter of its 250 workers at its operations at Cape Preston in the Pilbara were foreign, and it planned to import “hundreds” more tradesmen and professionals, mainly from China. A spokeswoman said it would not rule out a FIFO arrangement to China if it was necessary to find highquality workers.
- Kim Macdonald, Thewest.com.au
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Pacific workers to help fruit crisis |
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18 August, 2008
UP TO 2500 workers from Tonga, Vanuatu, Kiribati and Papua New Guinea will be granted visas to pick fruit in Australia to stop up to $700 million of fresh produce rotting on the vine because reliable local workers cannot be found.
The first group of the seasonal workers is expected to arrive for the harvest later this year under a three-year trial announced yesterday by the federal Agriculture Minister, Tony Burke. It is likely they will work in areas such as Griffith and Swan Hill.
The scheme is supported by the National Farmers Federation, the Australian Workers' Union and Oxfam Australia.
Mr Burke insisted it was not a "cheap labour" option for farmers, saying it would probably cost them slightly more than employing locals. Employers must first prove there are no local workers available and must meet Australian work standards, including awards and pay rates. They will also have to pay half the cost of the return airfare and meet other establishment costs. The Pacific Islanders will have to meet normal immigration health and background checks.
Announcing the policy at the organic food and farmers market in Marrickville, Mr Burke said he was convinced of its need after a visit to Griffith earlier this year. He said the horticulture industry asserted that up to $700 million of fresh produce was left to rot because of a lack of reliable workers.
"For too long Australian farmers have become sick to death of watching their own fruit rotting on the vine because they couldn't get a worker there to pick the fruit," he said.
Mr Burke said the scheme would also boost the Pacific Island countries by providing its citizens with skills, training and money.
The president of the National Farmers' Federation, David Crombie, said the pay "far exceeds what they could earn at home, representing a boost for them, their families and their local communities". The federation's vice-president, Charles Burke, said horticulture contributed $7 billion annually to the economy but was suffering from a nationwide shortfall of 22,000 seasonal workers.
The secretary of the Australian Workers' Union, Paul Howes, said he was "not overly comfortable" about allowing foreign labour but said as long as it was regulated and wages were not cut it was better than the industry facing a shortage of workers.
"We've had illegal foreign labour in Australia's agricultural sector for decades … and there's some pretty grubby and horrible things that happen out there in remote workplaces where farmers have used foreign labour. That's why I support a system that regulates it," he told Channel Ten's Meet The Press.
Oxfam Australia's executive director, Andrew Hewett, said it would be a "release valve on pressure for employment for the rapidly growing youth population in the Pacific Islands".
Mr Hewett urged the Government to do more to improve relations with Pacific nations, especially in relation to climate change, violence against women and government accountability.
Despite intense lobbying from the tourism and hospitality sector, Mr Burke said the scheme would be limited to horticulture, with visas restricted to seven months in any 12-month period. The scheme will be reviewed after 18 months.
The announcement comes on the eve of the Prime Minister's trip to Niue for the annual Pacific Island Forum.
Louis Sartor, from Griffith and District Citrus Growers, said he already employed fruit pickers from Tonga and believed the community would welcome more.
"A lot of people are under the misconception that we start importing labour because we want cheap labour," he said. "That's not the case at all. There's already a benchmark for agricultural labour: we don't want to undermine that. We just need reliability. We need numbers of workers."
- Leeshay McKenny, The Age
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