September, is already six months behind schedule and about $1 billion over budget. It also has been troubled by design problems and by a few weeks of weather-related delays, but the scarcity of labour, especially skilled workers, has become an industry-wide complaint. Australia has around $200 billion in gas-export projects alone in the investment pipeline, and developers such as Woodside, Chevron Corp , BG Group Plc and Santos Ltd need to move fast to sign up Asian customers or risk seeing one or more of their projects fall over.
BIG AUSTRALIA
The question of guest workers is larger than the debate over labour shortages. It also touches directly on another important issue facing Australia: rapid population growth and its ability to host the more than 100,000 new settlers every year.
Australia's egalitarian ideal means all foreign workers have the right to resettle in the country permanently -- and very many of them do just that, adding to the strain on national infrastructure such as transport, hospitals and schools.
Even those who oppose the idea of guest workers, based on fears that it could create an economic underclass of outback shanty-town dwellers, concede it has some demographic merit.
Currently, foreign workers who come to Australia on temporary employment visas can bring their families with them and can apply to stay on as permanent residents -- and about a third of all such visa-holders are granted residency every year, according to an Immigration Department spokesman.
Every migrant worker who arrives in Australia on temporary work visas, known as 457 visas, brings on average one dependent with them, according to Immigration Department data for 2009-10.
In contrast, guest workers are typically not allowed to bring family with them and have no right to resettle, which would ease the pressure on population growth.
Bob Birrell, economist and sociologist at Melbourne's Monash University, who is sceptical of guest-worker schemes in general, concedes that Gina Rinehart's idea has some demographic merit.
"To that extent, I agree with her," Birrell says. "It surprises me to say that but she does have a point there. It's just that I don't think she's going to succeed here."
It may seem odd that Australia, with 22 million people sharing a continent the size of Western Europe, is concerned about population. But the country is mostly arid, forcing about 90 percent of people to cram into 3 percent of the country. In 40 years, the population is projected to reach 36 million.
In major cities, infrastructure is already failing to keep up with population growth, and new suburbs are emerging without trains or hospitals. In the outback, the situation is far worse.
To walk much beyond the town boundary of Karratha is to enter a barren wilderness. At points, the outback is so flat and empty it is possible to gaze out at a 360-degree horizon and perceive a slight curvature of the Earth.
Inside Karratha, trucks rumble along the main street, ferrying materials and men between the town, nearby ports and the mines, while miners in fluorescent orange overalls are everywhere on foot. A town with an official population of around 18,000 is actually bursting with around 28,000 people.
Accommodation is so tight that big miners such as Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton find it cheaper to fly their workers into Karratha for a few weeks at a time rather than build whole new settlements in the desert.
For long-distance commuters such as Perth-based Lucille Lievaux, their temporary mine accommodation is usually an air-conditioned shipping container with a single bed. But even regular visitors like her will create demand for more labour.
All new miners arriving in the outback, even if only for a few weeks, will need doctors if they get sick and entertainment if they get bored. They will also generate more demand for lowly skilled jobs such as cooks, cleaners and garbage collectors.
That exacerbates labour shortages and drives wages higher -- to the point where scores of foreign backpackers are now being drawn to towns like Karratha, able to earn enough in a few months to fund the rest of their trips around the world.
Some live in tents around the town, and can quit their job and vanish in the time it takes to stuff a rucksack.
BIG AUSTRALIA
The question of guest workers is larger than the debate over labour shortages. It also touches directly on another important issue facing Australia: rapid population growth and its ability to host the more than 100,000 new settlers every year.
Australia's egalitarian ideal means all foreign workers have the right to resettle in the country permanently -- and very many of them do just that, adding to the strain on national infrastructure such as transport, hospitals and schools.
Even those who oppose the idea of guest workers, based on fears that it could create an economic underclass of outback shanty-town dwellers, concede it has some demographic merit.
Currently, foreign workers who come to Australia on temporary employment visas can bring their families with them and can apply to stay on as permanent residents -- and about a third of all such visa-holders are granted residency every year, according to an Immigration Department spokesman.
Every migrant worker who arrives in Australia on temporary work visas, known as 457 visas, brings on average one dependent with them, according to Immigration Department data for 2009-10.
In contrast, guest workers are typically not allowed to bring family with them and have no right to resettle, which would ease the pressure on population growth.
Bob Birrell, economist and sociologist at Melbourne's Monash University, who is sceptical of guest-worker schemes in general, concedes that Gina Rinehart's idea has some demographic merit.
"To that extent, I agree with her," Birrell says. "It surprises me to say that but she does have a point there. It's just that I don't think she's going to succeed here."
It may seem odd that Australia, with 22 million people sharing a continent the size of Western Europe, is concerned about population. But the country is mostly arid, forcing about 90 percent of people to cram into 3 percent of the country. In 40 years, the population is projected to reach 36 million.
In major cities, infrastructure is already failing to keep up with population growth, and new suburbs are emerging without trains or hospitals. In the outback, the situation is far worse.
To walk much beyond the town boundary of Karratha is to enter a barren wilderness. At points, the outback is so flat and empty it is possible to gaze out at a 360-degree horizon and perceive a slight curvature of the Earth.
Inside Karratha, trucks rumble along the main street, ferrying materials and men between the town, nearby ports and the mines, while miners in fluorescent orange overalls are everywhere on foot. A town with an official population of around 18,000 is actually bursting with around 28,000 people.
Accommodation is so tight that big miners such as Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton find it cheaper to fly their workers into Karratha for a few weeks at a time rather than build whole new settlements in the desert.
For long-distance commuters such as Perth-based Lucille Lievaux, their temporary mine accommodation is usually an air-conditioned shipping container with a single bed. But even regular visitors like her will create demand for more labour.
All new miners arriving in the outback, even if only for a few weeks, will need doctors if they get sick and entertainment if they get bored. They will also generate more demand for lowly skilled jobs such as cooks, cleaners and garbage collectors.
That exacerbates labour shortages and drives wages higher -- to the point where scores of foreign backpackers are now being drawn to towns like Karratha, able to earn enough in a few months to fund the rest of their trips around the world.
Some live in tents around the town, and can quit their job and vanish in the time it takes to stuff a rucksack.
THE SOUTH PACIFIC MODEL
This phenomenon is well known in the east of the country, where fruit-growing regions have relied for decades on the fickle flow of young backpackers to provide seasonal labour. But a few years ago the horticultural industry became so fed up, they did something radical: they set up a guest-worker scheme.
The scheme brings in workers from poor island nations of the South Pacific and is backed by the government -- though it is very quietly pursued and faces scepticism even from within the Immigration Department, which helps to administer it.
For Richard Hamley, who employs islanders under the two-year-old scheme to pick tomatoes, there is no good reason why the mining industry should not adopt a similar scheme.
"We were originally a little sceptical about it because we didn't think that islanders would have been a good fit, but we could not have been more wrong," says Hamley, who runs the tomato division of horticultural firm Costa Exchange.
"They are fantastic workers. They have a work ethic that makes Australians look silly ... A lot of Australians don't want to work on weekends and they take time off."
Hamley says his guest workers are actually more expensive overall than local labour, given strict obligations to transport and house them and to pay fair wages, but he stresses that they are much more productive and better value for money.
Right now, such a scheme appears to be a step too far for the mining industry, where unions deny labour shortages are jeopardising some big projects and they point to the record profits being mined out of Australia by global firms such as Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Xstrata Plc .
"As far as I can see, all the projects that have been planned to go ahead have gone ahead," Ged Kearney, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, told Reuters. "There haven't been any major projects to my knowledge that have been held up critically because of a shortage of labour."
Even the AWU, however, does not appear to completely rule out the introduction of a guest-worker scheme, provided local workers are given first priority and training where required.
"Only after companies have shown they are prepared to invest in training to give Australians the first bite of the cherry should we consider bringing in guest workers," says AWU boss Howes.
Indeed, the ruling Labor party is moving quietly in the direction of guest workers for the mining industry with its "enterprise migration agreement" announced in May.
THE GOOD LIFE
Tailored for mining, this new arrangement enables developers to fast-track the import of short-term labour for projects worth more than A$2 billion. They can bring in construction workers and set their wages project-wide, giving them more control over costs, though wages would have to accord with "market rates".
Even Rinehart is pleased.
"I believe in short-term guest labour for pre-construction and construction periods and am delighted to see recent developments that major projects over A$2 billion will be able to access guest labour...," she said in the email to Reuters.
The key difference, though, between this new arrangement and a genuine guest-worker programme like the fruit industry's scheme is that workers under the former still have the right to resettle and pursue the great Australian egalitarian dream.
The immigrant's dream is deeply woven into the social fabric of a nation where about a fifth of the population is born abroad, almost double the proportion of Americans born overseas.
Australia still maintains a tough stand.(By Thomson Reuters)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment