Immigration Watch International (2): Australia: Tourism and hospitality sectors plea for international workers to cover shortage

Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Australia: Tourism and hospitality sectors plea for international workers to cover shortage

Queensland industries crippled by a worker shortage have pleaded with the federal government to throw open the border for international workers to provide much-needed employment relief.

The state’s tourism and hospitality sectors were among the hardest hit, with tens of thousands of workers needed to support various industries and many forced to trim operations due to the staffing shortfall.

Industry leaders say they have met with Anthony Albanese’s Home Affairs ministers to ask for an increase to the number of skilled and seasonal workers permitted to enter the country.

But a spokesman for Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said the government is unlikely to pull the trigger until it holds its Jobs and Skills Summit in early September.

The summit aims to “help to shape the future of Australia’s labour market”, according to the federal government, but the Queensland tourism peak body fears the widespread staff shortfall is a crisis in need of urgent relief.

“The challenge that we have is the problem is here, right now,” Queensland Tourism Industry Council chief executive Brett Fraser said. “It’s a problem that we need to address right now.”

The tourism and hospitality sector alone reported more than 5300 vacancies in June, with the industry stripped of its access to holiday visa workers throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, while the number of job advertisements was more than 35 per cent higher compared with June 2021.

“There’s segments of the employment market that just right now aren’t in Australia,” Mr Fraser said. “Getting those visitors back in the country is a really critical part to it.”

Master Builders Australia CEO Denita Wawn says “resolving the people shortage” in the construction industry is the main concern at the moment. “That is really where the crunch is,” she told Sky News Australia. “We desperately need more…
Queensland Hotels Association chief executive Bernie Hogan said jobs that once attracted hundreds of applications are now laying dormant, with the recruiting of chefs “virtually impossible”.

“If you lose a chef, it’s very, very difficult to find a replacement, which means most of them end up closing parts of their business for several days a week,” he said.

Increasing international migration should be “one of the first levers” to help the struggling workforce, according to Chamber of Commerce & Industry Queensland (CCIQ).

Policy and Advocacy manager Cherie Josephson said the Home Affairs department allowing residents from specific countries into Australia to work in industries could be a solution rather than increasing the overall cap for either skilled or seasonal workers.

“But I think when you’ve got worker shortages across a good number of industries, it would make sense to be developing a plan to attract more skilled and seasonal workers into Queensland to address the shortages across multiple industries,” she said.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/business/qld-business/queensland-tourism-and-hospitality-sectors-plea-for-international-workers-to-cover-shortage/news-story/93f166cb182073366ad1cb940cb9c03f

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Background

Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.

Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.

The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:

1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.

2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.

3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.

4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.

5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.

6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.

I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.

Immigration Watch International (2)

Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Australia: Tourism and hospitality sectors plea for international workers to cover shortage

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