Fester I love it! get into me! but stay focused, I am hardly a candidate for lower income, hardly asking for that, a trade union official and proud card carrying member of the ALP
You however must keep an eye on me! I am from center unity! the right of the party, we are known to be a bit too realistic.
We dreadful people that we are understand world trade, that the chances of more than very small numbers giving up the cheap imports for Australian made at 3 times the prices is slim.
We have a view no matter who is in power the skills shortage is real, and a problem.
I would ask we get back to the thread and reality.
Country workers must not be isolated from this high earning chance and for the most part the young are not, they fly in fly out for 3 times the wages of those who stay.
I am sickened by the thought we could use workers then dispose of them like another western giant of industry.
Migration is far better than such for both sides.
This country's birth rate is down, we can not produce the workers we need.
We have failed to educate the ones we have.
Communicat read his post, blames a government thrown out of office in 1975! The following governments must have all been blind!
26.000 in coal mining? come on coal is part but not all mining Newcastle would see much more than that figure in lost jobs without coal no Newcastle.

Banjo

Banjo Said-

It is not ethicly or morally right for us to poach trained workers from other countries,simply on the grounds that we need them. These poorer countries need their trained workers more than we do. We are just greedy and lazy.

Industry should be told straight, if they want more skilled workers they must train them. Industry can afford gigantic profits and massive payouts to their executives, not to mention gifts of millions to the major political parties. Its about time they were more constructive with their funds.

Why should our taxpayers foot the bill for staff training that puts money in industries pockets.
Posted by Banjo, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 5:54:16 PM

PALE REPLIES
Banjo
Well Said - "Perfect".
You should throw your hat in for next P M

Thank You

"I am hardly a candidate for lower income, hardly asking for that, a trade union official and proud card carrying member of the ALP"

That's great Belly, so I guess you would be familiar with the attempts to undercut wages in Australia with cheap os labour from when the convicts stopped coming? Plenty have suggested the economic necessity in past times also.

"Migration is far better than such for both sides.
This country's birth rate is down, we can not produce the workers we need.
We have failed to educate the ones we have."

Not so Belly. Migration entails a huge infrastructure cost to cope with a growing population. And when Australia poaches skilled workers from os, the home country loses. Remember the brain drain? Without the growth you would have plenty of skilled workers to keep the mining boom going.

Will these cheap foreign labourers on visas ever go back home?

There were hundreds of thousands of mexicans marching in cities across America recently who had lived in the country for over twenty years or more who refused to be deported when the government decided to crack down on them. As far as they're concerned America is now their home and there are too many of them for the government to do anything about it.
Will these visas just be rubber stamped by employers to allow these workers to stay every time their expiry date comes up? Until they've been in the country for decades and have to be granted citizenship.

This lack of training of skilled workers shows clearly the lack of foresight by our elected leaders who have failed to make it compulsory for businesses and companies to train people. They themselves have been busy privatising everything in sight like the railways who used to train thousands of tradesmen across the country.

They still have not made it compulsory for industry and big companies to take on apprentices as far as I know, but are further pandering to their profiteering by allowing them to bring in cheap labour.

What about all this money they hand out like lollies at election time to win elections. Is this money they should have been using to train young people in all the industries they sold and privatised.

The banks should never have been privatised either and America is finding that out to their cost at the moment. Banks are too pivotal to the whole economic wellbeing of a country to be left to their own devices. The great depression should have demonstrated that.

Fester and others. let us not divert the thread, the shameful intent to use both Australian workers and imported slave laborers is different than worker/skills shortage.
While we are told bananas rot on the ground, NT fruit does too, the only connection to worker shortage is low wages in those industry's.
Workers are rightly so saying I want far more, shoppers are asked to pay all time high prices while pickers are asked to work for less.
The real shortage of workers sees few willing to do that.
Have we any of the human good will we had post ww2 left? we once tried to help other poorer country's under schemes like the Colombo one.
Now some think importing cheap Labour is a moral action?
We must confront the fact we can and must do much better in skills training.
And that some of the impact is worker shortage in some industry's.
And the claim poaching workers from over seas? what should every country lock its doors, unthought out claim.
Migration is better than stagnation.

Belly

The Colombo Plan was devised to educate the citizens of developing nations, thus providing them with a skilled workforce to further their development. Now Labor an Coalition governments alike see developing countries as an opportunity to pilfer what few skilled workers they have left.

You talk of fruit rotting on the ground for want of labourers to pick it. But to call for the importation of cheap labourers every time a business cant cut it merely the egalitarian values of this great country. But if you want feudalism the open the flood gates by all means.

What about a technical fix? Technology always seems to be the great Saviour for any problems of a growing population, so why cant it help with the skills shortage? Anyhow, think of all the workers freed up without mass immigration. It would solve the housing affordability crisis also.