Australia not attracted to guest worker idea [1]
Monday, December 5, 2005 - 17:56. Updated on Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - 17:04.
Any hope held by Tongans or other Pacific Islanders that Australia was about to launch a 'guest worker scheme', allowing unskilled labour to go and pick fruit in Australia, was put to rest at the end of November when the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, made it clear that Australia was not going to entertain it.
"There are currently no mechanisms allowing for the entry of unskilled workers to Australia - from anywhere in the world. Australia has not had guest worker schemes in the past and is not attracted to them," he said in a press statement.
Mr Downer said that the answer to the Pacific's large and growing unemployment problems did not lie in a few hundred unskilled young people coming to Australia to pick fruit for a few months on the year. "The answer lies rather in domestically generated growth. As the World Bank points out, migration is no substitute for economic development, and development ultimately depends on sound domestic economic policies."
He pointed out that Australia's extensive aid program to the Pacific region with an estimated $955 million for 2005-06 manifested Australia's commitment to working in partnership with Pacific Island countries to help built stability and growth, thereby creating jobs and reducing unemployment.
He also further re-emphasized a statement that was made by the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, at the Pacific Islands Forum in Port Moresby recently, when he announced an in-principle decision to establish an Australian Technical College for the Pacific in one of the Pacific Islands, "to increase significantly the number of skilled workers in the Pacific." The Prime Minister said that the scheme would provide the skills needed to help stimulate economic growth and development, "as well as facilitating the mobility of workers throughout the region, including to Australia."