Absolute drivel.

Big projects generally require high level technical skills in particular fields, with the experience to match. These skills and experience seldom take less than a decade to acquire and are often very specialised.

For an example, a control engineer that has a decade of experience in oil and gas is a valuable person in that industry, but of comparatively little use in pulp and paper, food, etc.

A decade ago, a particular speciality that was not particularly needed, is now. There is no chance of training someone to the required level of competency.

To say that "Large mining and gas projects have very long lead times - long enough in fact to train some of the existing workforce in skills that may be required for future projects." is pure fantasy, dreamt up by someone that has obviously never worked on big engineering projects.

That Australia has a net inflow of skills is because the resource industry is growing. Other industries may not be, and their skills migrate.

Blocking the inflow is not going to stop the outflow.

The author's article is full of holes in the real world.

Yes, we can train our own hairdressers and chefs, but it's
quite a different situation, when it comes down to large
engineering/mining projects.

We live in an increased age of specialisation. Having a
university degree is not enough to qualify for building
a multi billion gas plant. Specialists in all these
complex fields move around globally and so they should.

I recently watched a documentary about the building of
the soccer stadiums in South Africa. The local labour
provided the grunt, but the key personell were stadium
engineering experts, whose critical knowledge was vital
and saved mega millions in terms of design and construction
costs. You can only gain that kind of knowledge by
many years of experience.

The materials too were globally sourced for good reasons.
Some of these critical components are so specialised, that
there are only a very limited number of companies globally,
with the machinery and expertise to do the job. That
is what ever more complex specialisation is all about.

After the South African stadiums were finished, the
experts were moving on to Brazil, for their next
challenge.

Liquified gas plants too, are very specialised and complex
bits of gear. Companies should be able to source the very
best people for the job, given the huge investments involved.
These experts are also the best people to teach locals
with on the job training for the future.

If you really want to cut "skilled" migration, cut those
slipping in under the local university training programmes
to obtain an easy Australian residency visa

The author is really talking about population but he makes some interesting points.

Last year 508,000 people arrived to live in Australia as permanent residents, temporary workers or students. Just over 13,000 of them were refugees, or about one in 40. Even if all the asylum seekers arriving by boat were counted, the 2726 of them would make up about one in 200 of the arrivals.

Relying on importing foreign workers to provide us with the skills we need, rather than the Gov doing all it can to ensure that Australians are trained in the skills we need is problematic. It's a double bind problem.

It has a parallel with our reliance on foreign capital. Australia is one of the richest countries in the Western world, yet one of the poorest savers. Despite our wealth, every year we are in the bottom half of the OECD in savings rates. That's why our net foreign debt is now $654 billion, and doubling every eight years.

As the International Monetary Fund and many others have pointed out, our reliance on foreign borrowing is a risk to our economic future. Some suggest that our reliance on foreign skilled workers is a risk to something even more important: our social fabric, and our sense of national unity.

I think that last point is what the writer is worried about. Social upheaval. I can't see it myself but I'm willing to be convinced.

Shadow Minister and Yabby - sorry guys but the writer is making some excellent points.. if the big companies want skills then why not make them pay for those skills.. otherwise we discourage those who go to the time and trouble to acquire those skills.
However, I would take issue with the emphasis on resource projects where the specialised workforce is internationalised.. There are lots of other areas - pattern making, nursing - where workers do not nautrally cross international boundaries and where the usual laws of supply and demand do not quite work. If you double the wages of nurses, for example, would you get double the number of nurses (after a training lag).. doubt it. People will still not want to be nurses, unless they have the calling. In that respect immigration quots serve a purpose.

*if the big companies want skills then why not make them pay for those skills.*

Curmudgeon, a traindriver working for Rio, earns around 200k$
a year. I have yet to hear from anyone I know working for miners
in WA, complain about what they are paid.

Where we have a problem is this: Up to now we only really had
one serious LNG project, the NW shelf. Suddenly now, with the
rise of LNG, there are projects popping up everywhere. Not just
in WA, in Gladstones with CSG there are 4 on the drawing boards alone.

So a whole lot of really top expertise is required for a whole lot
of projects. It does not matter what you pay them, if the people
arn't there, they are not there. There is no magic fairy to create
them, so they need to come in from other LNG projects around the
world. Gorgon alone is a 43 billion$ project for instance.
Pluto is huge, so are some others.

These are the projects that are driving Australia's future
exports and given that our current account deficit remains a
disaster, we need these projects to pay the country's debts.

When "shadow minister" refers to the article as drivel and trys to cherry pick a minute employment component of a large project to justify support of the program does him no credit.
When two thirds of the migrants on Skilled program dont end up using their allegedly high value skills in Australia, when you can bring someone in on a 457 Visa to work in McDonalds you dont have to be to smart to know this program is an abject failure.
The "Education" route to residency migration racket is another matter.

Curmudgeon,

Yabby is right, Many of the skills are simply not available in Aus. Top engineers with their LOA etc cost easily $400k+ The miners and big companies are not paying this to deny locals employment. The cost of employing a local without the requisite know how will cost the company much more.

A figure I was given was that employing one professional creates work for up to 4 lower skilled employees.

Shadow Minister and Yabby - I have no doubt that what you write in the more reasoned second posts is true, but you are still left with the issue that if the companies concerned want those specialised LPG skills then they have to pay.. They can't or shouldn't use the immigration quotas as a way to get labor more cheaply, although that isn't going to happen anyway. They have to train the labour up themselves, and then pay them enough to retain them, and/or pay attract the staff they want.. in essense it was all the article really said.. if big companies want those skilled staff then they should get out their chequebooks..

In October last year a group of Chinese workers were paid less than $2 an hour tto dismantle the former Mitsubishi car plant in Adelaide.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/18/2956996.htm?section=justin

I think that is one reason to stop or at least evaluate more carefully the issue of bringing in skilled workers - often it is a scam.

Australia needs to be doing more to skill its own people.

Curmudgeon,

How do you train someone with a decade's experience to be available in the next few months.

You cannot get a baby in one month by making 9 women pregnant.

The reason experienced professionals are paid many times more than graduates is because they are worth it. Years of experience cannot be achieved by a few months of Tafe.

Thanks for ideas and comments everyone.

I wrote this article with the express intent of highlighting another angle to the debate on skilled labour shortages, and the commonly proposed solution of increasing quotas of skilled migrants.

I tried to highlight a few interrelated and often ignored parts of the issue:
1. That highly skilled labour is extremely mobile and thus wages must be competitive not just domestically, but internationally.

2. Those who invest in education, and put in the hard yards for some years afterwards, need a return on their education and training investment. It needs to be obvious to young professionals that there are rewards for following that path. Any industry or skill singled out in immigration quotas due to 'demand', will face the problem of increased competition for wages, thus reducing the returns to education in that area.

3. For some specialist skills (especially those mentioned, such as large energy projects) governments can do little to help train people in this respect. Hypothetically, if there are 20 LNG (or other specialist large scale engineering) projects worldwide, and those companies in the industry wish to expand to 50 projects, where do they think they will acquire people with experience?

The only sources of work experience are their own existing projects.

Thus these industries need to look after their own growth and demand for skills. As Yabby mentioned "it doesn't matter what you pay them, if these people aren't there, they aren't there" - this applies globally. Government intervention through changes to immigration laws, even investment in education, cannot change this fact.

Continued in next comment...

4. Every country in the world has argued that there are skills shortages for many many years. Just google skills shortage + any country and you will find thousands of articles across many years.

5. Arguing for increased skilled migration is a way for businesses to get highly skilled people for less that what the market wage would be if they only had access to domestically trained people. This then simple reinforces the 'brain drain' exodus. You need to pay to get them back.

Anyway, it has been an interesting discussion.

Oh my .... come on you lot.. get with the program!

Immigration programs are about votes.

LNP "Business" Migration.

ALP "Skilled" migration.

GREENS "Compassionate" migration.

On the issue of 'LNG project skills' are globally mobile etc.. says nothing about the need for allowing "immigration" but everything about temporary work visa's, because if they come here for a project duration, they will be somewhere else when it's finished. Or..they will join dole queues.

Then again, we could always train our own people.. let them go to projects off shore and send some biccies back to OUR treasury rather than someone elses.

The other main attraction with importing skills is that most highly skilled Aussies are reluctant to move out of the cities. On one site I tried to recruit graduates, paying significantly above average and offering an fantastic training program, and could not get a young electrical engineer for more than a year, and even then he was an immigrant.

Overseas engineers are prepared to work where ever is required.

The article is a vast over simplification.