AUSTRALIA: Canberra Campaigns to Attract Senior Workers as Immigration Flow Slows Down

CANBERRA (The Canberra Times), April 5, 2006: AUSTRALIA, like many Western countries, is running short of skilled workers, particularly in health care, the trades, construction and the sciences. And the problem is expected to get worse before it gets better, given the general ageing of the population and the many baby-boomers who are approaching retirement age. Governments have been aware of the problem for years, and have put in place measures designed to alleviate the coming labour shortages. These include immigration policies aimed at skilled workers, measures to encourage women and unemployed people back into the workforce, and increasing the number of places at tertiary institutions to encourage more people to improve their skills and training. The quickest and cheapest way to boost the numbers of skilled workers in Australia is by encouraging them to migrate here. Skilled immigration, particularly since World War II, has served this country profitably, but the current international skills shortage means pickings are no longer easy or cheap. Not even America, long the No 1 destination of migrants everywhere, can assume it will continue to attract the world's best and brightest. That global competition, and the comparative delay in training enough Australians to meet future demand means the states and territories will increasingly compete with one another to attract the available skilled workers. And because migrants, skilled or otherwise, tend to gravitate to the biggest cities, many of the smaller states and territories will struggle to attract the workers they need. The ACT Government has begun its own campaign to attract skilled workers to the territory. It is more a marketing campaign selling the virtues of living in Canberra than a set of incentives to woo people to fill specific job vacancies. The architects of the plan, which has significant private-sector backing, have concluded that their best chance of success lies in focusing on the nearest pool of workers to Canberra - the south-western suburbs of Sydney. In promising Sydneysiders - as chauvinistic about the qualities of their city as New Yorkers are about theirs - a better quality of life if they choose to live and work in Canberra, the campaign has left itself open to inevitable riposte. NSW Premier Morris Iemma duly obliged on Monday, saying that while he enjoyed visiting and working in Canberra, he "couldn't wait to head off home at the end of the working week". His comments are curious given that his predecessor Bob Carr used to complain about the expense of accommodating large numbers of new arrivals. Mr Carr had good reason to fret about the city's financial capacity to absorb more people. Sydney's roads, hospitals and transport system have been neglected for years, and the prolonged dry has raised doubts about whether the city can meet the environmental cost of continued population growth. In many respects, Sydney has become a victim of its own success. Its mass and economic dynamism means it is a magnet both for internal and foreign immigration, but without significant economic and environmental reforms its amenity will begin to deteriorate as more people are drawn to it. Meanwhile, the smaller cities and regional centres struggle to grow their own economies in the face of the overwhelming dominance of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Some Canberrans, mindful of the city's infrastructure difficulties and anxious that it not lose any of its own amenity, will see little need to attract more people here. However, Canberrra's evolution from purely administrative town to economically diversified city rests heavily on the ability of business, particularly its growing IT sector, to attract more skilled workers. The task of ensuring that such people are available falls mainly to the Federal Government. The Commonwealth has carriage of policy formulation on immigration, as well as a significant input into education. Until those policies deliver results, competition between the states and territories for skilled workers will probably intensify.