Australia to welcome Pacific islanders to ease tourism, aged care skills shortage
A program that brings workers from Pacific island nations to Australia has been boosted in a bid to address critical skills shortages, including in Queensland’s beleaguered aged care sector.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese poses with some workers in Suva preparing to ease the skills shortage in aged care in Australia. (Supplied image)
The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme has been expanded to include the services industry, which will include aged care, tourism and hospitality.
Currently, the scheme has been focused on industries such as agriculture and other blue-collar sectors.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the expansion would allow for more workers in industries where there had been workforce shortage.
“This is good for our Pacific island neighbours because what it enables is more women to participate in the scheme,” he told reporters in Fiji on Friday.
“But it’s also good for Australia because these are areas in which there are massive skills shortages.”
Currently, there are 25,000 workers from the Pacific who are in Australia on the scheme, including 2600 from Fiji.
The prime minister said the government would also look to expand the scheme to allow for workers to travel with their families.
Earlier, Albanese posed for photos with TAFE students in Suva and said on Twitter: “These workers in Suva are gaining a TAFE qualification and will work in nursing homes in regional Queensland from Mackay to Toowoomba, filling critical skills shortages”.
He said a previous exclusion on families may have been a factor in fewer people taking up the scheme previously.
“A practical measure that we will have, and one that shows that we respect people from the Pacific and their contribution that they are making, is to allow families to be able to apply to join in Australia for that period of time,” he said.
“That, to me, seems to be a common sense move … it’s something that we’ll implement.”
Industries across the country have been experiencing employee shortages, driven by a tight labour market, record low unemployment and rising Covid-19 cases.
Albanese said the expansion of the scheme would provide not only an economic boost to Australia but to countries across the Pacific as well.
“The average participant in those schemes remits around $6000 a year back to their country of origin as well,” he said.
“It’s a way of boosting the economy (in the Pacific) whilst making a real difference back in Australia. I think this is an example whereby our practical partnership is producing enormous benefit.”
