PREMIER Alan Carpenter wants to increase the
level of immigration to WA. Mr Carpenter
said countries such as India,
China and Africa would be canvassed for
workers with much-needed skills to boost the
state's workforce.
He said people of all races should feel
welcome to settle in WA and contribute to
the community.
"I think we need to increase our immigration
numbers," he told The Sunday Times.
"We've got a shortage of skilled labour in
WA – in fact, probably all labour – and we
should be more energetic in trying to get
people to come and live in this part of the
world".
"We need people with the right skill set
from wherever we can get them." Mr
Carpenter, who retained his State
Development portfolio after taking over as
Premier when Geoff Gallop suddenly quit the
top job last month, said skilled migration
would be a high priority for the Government".
"It's a really important issue for us in WA,
to have enough workers," he said.
"We've had the skilled migration unit
spending a lot of time trying to recruit
people in Britain, but my view is if you've
got people from India or south Asia or China
or Africa or South America who want to come
to Australia and have something to offer,
and we've got places for them, then we
should get them".
"You have to work within the federal
immigration laws, but there's more that we
can do."
Mr Carpenter said the labour shortage
extended from professionals to semi-skilled
workers.
"It's across the board – we're even short of
police officers," he said.
"We need to get out and push as hard as we
can."
Mr Carpenter said he supported Police
Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan's recent drive
to recruit officers from different religions
by providing culturally-appropriate
uniforms.
"I looked at what Karl had to say and I
think he was absolutely correct," he said.
"You've got to be able to draw into a police
force people who are going to reflect the
community they are going to police in".
"You can't be afraid to do things because
you're going to get a small minority of
people who are going to react negatively in
a very unfortunate way."
Mr Carpenter said his push for skilled
migration was a continuation of a policy
that had been in place in
Australia for 30 years.
On Wednesday, he assigned controversial new
minister Norm Marlborough the responsibility
of expanding the program as part of his
duties in assisting the Minister for
Education and Training.
Colleen Egan -
6 February, 2006
The Sunday Times
A land of opportunity
With many country towns facing a declining
population and a desperate shortage of
workers, the push is on again to attract
migrants to the regional heart of our
nation, writes Asa Wahlquist
JOHN Dal Broi pauses to count the
nationalities of the 100 workers employed at
his family winery in Griffith, southern NSW.
"We employ a lot of Indians, a lot of Turks,
Afghans. We have some Filipina girls, South
African, Dutch, German. We have the lot. I
must sit down and work it out one day."
Griffith, a pretty and prosperous town on
the Murrumbidgee River, wears the mantle of
the most multicultural country town in NSW.
Dal Broi, who is also Griffith's Mayor, says
the first Italian migrants, including his
father, arrived in the 1930s.
"This area was developing. There was a lot
of manual work and Italians traditionally
were very good at growing crops and very
good with trees, and this offered them the
opportunity. That is the main reason they
came here: just to work."
Word spread. Today people come to
Griffith from many parts of the world. For those who
are unskilled and not literate in English,
there are manual jobs.
"Some of them are pretty difficult tasks,
out in the hot sun. They work hard and they
work as a family," Dal Broi says. But
Griffith offers those prepared to work "a
lifestyle they would never have in their
home country".
Griffith is now home to up to 54 nationalities.
Although it is the envy of many country
towns for its success in attracting
migrants, it still has an employment
problem: it can't fill all the job
vacancies.
"There is work in
Griffith for all types of people: for winemakers,
town planners, engineers, there is a
shortage of professional people and
unskilled labour ... there is heaps of
employment here," Dal Broi says.
The cities have traditionally proven to be
magnets for migrants: the most recent
census, in 2001, found an overwhelming 85
per cent of migrants settled in metropolitan
areas, with more than 60 per cent choosing
Sydney or Melbourne.
With many country towns now desperately
short of skilled and unskilled workers, the
Department of Immigration has launched its
biggest campaign since the 1960s to attract
migrants, many of them for regional
Australia.
This push comes on top of a record number of
skilled migrants -- 18,700 -- choosing to
live and work in regional
Australia in the past financial year.
While the perception of rural Australia is
that it is largely anglicised, in reality it
is home to many nationalities, such as the
Germans in South Australia's Barossa Valley,
the Italians of Griffith, the Sikh community
in Woolgoolga, NSW, Finnish and Yugoslav
miners in Mount Isa, and the Hmong, from
Laos, growing pineapples and tropical fruit
in northern Queensland.
James Jupp, director of the Immigration and
Multicultural Studies Centre at the
Australian National University, says early
migration came from the
British Isles,
with some exceptions such as the Germans who
went to
South Australia and Queensland.
The legacy of Scottish migration is evident
in rural Australia. A scan of farmer
politicians reveals names such as Malcolm
Fraser, Ian McLachlan, Ian McFarlane, Ian
Sinclair and Donald McGauchie.
Jupp says Scottish migrants started coming
in the 1820s.
"They didn't want to divide the property up
so the younger sons were told to go to
Canada or Australia. They were not
necessarily poor by any means."
Most Irish settlers came from rural areas.
Many took up small farms in southeastern NSW
but the depression of the 1890s forced a
large number off the land and into the
cities.
Jupp says many European migrants arrived in
the 1920s, "though the White Australia
Policy prevented migration from anywhere
else". He says most of the Italian, Yugoslav
and Greek migrants settled in rural areas,
where they "started off as labourers and
ended up as farmers".
The Snowy Mountains Scheme is often called
the crucible of Australian multiculturalism.
The workers were drawn from the 170,000
displaced people who came to Australia after
World War II.
"They were sent for two years to anywhere
which required labour, and that was
predominantly in rural and outback areas,"
Jupp says. But once their country service
was over, most went to the cities. Since
then, most migrants have gone to the big
cities.
There are some exceptions, such as Griffith,
and Shepparton in Victoria. Both are
fruit-growing towns, and Jupp says many
southern Europeans have bought fruit farms
along the Murray.
"Small, labour-intensive properties have a
reasonably high migrant population, but most
of the wheat and sheep and cattle areas are
where the last of the old Australians hang
out. They have not attracted migrants much
for a whole range of reasons, and they are
declining in terms of population."
Graeme Hugo, professor of geography at the
University of Adelaide, says that as
Australia's migration program becomes more
skill-oriented and an increasing proportion
of migrants come from large cities, "it is
only natural that those people are going to
find job opportunities in cities".
He says migrants tend to go to places where
they have social support systems and
networks. These are overwhelmingly in Sydney
and Melbourne.
"That makes it doubly hard to attract
migrants to areas where there aren't so many
migrants, because it is a strongly
self-reinforcing type of process," Hugo
says.
Country communities such as Warrnambool in
western Victoria have worked hard to provide
community support for newcomers. Warrnambool
Mayor Glenys Phillpot says the town wanted
an increased population and faced a skill
shortage. After several years of research,
consultation and planning, the council
initiated the Migration to Warrnambool
Project in 2003. So far the town has
welcomed more than 100 people from Sudan.
Hugo says Warrnambool, Shepparton and
Ballarat are three towns that have taken
"very strong initiatives to get involved in
state-specific regional migration schemes to
bring people in, but also they have taken
initiatives to assist people who do come, so
there is some focus on retention. In each
case, the key drivers are the local
governments."
Federal Labor backbencher Craig Emerson
argues that Australia needs a new wave of
immigrants and regional incentive programs
for skilled migrants. He worries that many
migrants to the regions later move to the
big cities.
"Further incentives to retain migrants in
regional areas should be considered," he
argues. "Migrants usually place a high value
on family reunion. If migrants remained in
regional Australia for a specified period
beyond the permanent residency qualifying
period, applications for family reunion
should be given favourable consideration."
The Department of Immigration's regional
migration programs last year attracted about
16 per cent of all migrants coming to
Australia.
"They are going great guns in terms of the
numbers of people in the pipeline to come
under those schemes, but what is really
necessary now is to study the way in which
they are retained," Hugo says.
"How are we going to keep those people in
those areas so they don't subsequently
migrate to
Sydney or
Melbourne once they are able to?"
The Department of Immigration and
Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs offers
a state-specific and regional migration
visa. The underlying principle is that the
state and regional authorities are best
placed to know what skills are needed where.
In 2004-05, 18,700 visas were granted under
the regional migration scheme, almost a 50
per cent increase on the previous year.
Migrants can be sponsored by employers,
relatives, state or territory governments.
Migrants granted a skilled independent
(regional) visa must live and work in
regional Australia.
Abul Rizvi, a deputy secretary with the
DIMIA, says the department is trying to find
ways of helping regional
Australia get the skills it needs. The first step is
promoting the smaller states and regional
Australia.
"The second thing we do is try to design our
visas so that we give more flexibility and
opportunity to states and regional
authorities wishing to sponsor people to
particular regions of Australia, so it is
much easier for a region such as the
Riverina, or Tasmania, to sponsor a skilled
migrant, than if they were trying to attract
someone to Sydney.
"People recognise the contract they have
entered into when they settle in regional
Australia. Often they are very pleasantly
surprised about the lifestyle and they come
to love it," Rizvi says, "so in the majority
of instances we think it is working quite
well."
He expects the program to grow "as more and
more regions recognise the benefits and more
and more participate in these visa
arrangements". But he admits communities
must work with the new settlers,
particularly if they are refugees, if they
want to really benefit.
"Big metropolitan centres do become quite
impersonal," Rizvi says. "The community
spirit and the welcoming nature of country
towns in Australia is just fantastic, and
that is one of the keys to success with
this."
Asa Wahlquist
30 January, 2006
The Australian
