Australian resources boom

Why is it that Australia's unemployed in March 2010 just gone number 611,000, while thousands of unskilled jobs are being filled by new immigrants?

Walk around the centres of Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney and get into a taxi and find invariably a new migrant at the wheel, born overseas, whose first language is not English, who has had to learn the city streets after driving the taxi. Meanwhile how many of our unemployed, Australian born living in cities, who grew up in the city and could drive a taxi if the opportrunity presented? Why does not Centrelink link up with the taxi industry and put priority on Australia's unemployed, before the jobs go to foreigners? When tourist want to get directions from a taxi driver in a city, someone who is born in the city will have more local knowledge than someone who has not.

Same goes for unskilled and semi-skilled government workers such as those employed by the railways, selling tickets, directing passengers, as guards, as linesmen. Why are these jobs dominated 100% by new migrants?

Is it because Federal and State governments in Australia have prejudiced rules to employ migrants first, because if they don't, they can be branded as discrminatory. That Australian-borns and Indigenous Australians are poorly represented in government unskilled and semi-skilled jobs is REVERSE DISCRIMINATION.

In NSW, government policy requires people who work for the NSW Government need to adhere to its principle of
Cultural Diversity, celebrating not Australian values, but different linguistic, religious, racial and ethnic backgrounds under the Principles of Multiculturalism Act 2000. Such diversity recognises linguistic and cultural assets as a 'valuable resource'.

English language, assimilation and cultural fit is out the door.
Employmers, vocational training institutions like TAFE and Centrelink seem to be poles apart not talking to each other. Australians can't find work, yet employers can't find workers. Liberal and Labor simpletons just take the easy quick fix solution - more migrants!.

Tony Abbott's kneejerk solution

Catholic Liberal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's latest kneejerk solution is to ban Australia's unemployed under the age of 30 access to welfare. Abbots wants under-30s to leave the community they grew up in and relocate to areas where employers need unskilled labour. Forget that the migrants have taken the local unskilled jobs.
Tony Abbott calls for debate on banning dole for under-30s

Abbott other kneejerk solution is to send Australia's youth to West Australian and Queensland mining and resources sector. This is the same industry sector that failed to train its workforce before the last resources boom and so had to go offshore for more migrants. Then when the boom ended, corporations like BHP Billiton sacked thousands and abandonned local communities dependent on it.

Remember the 6000 sacked by BHP Billiton a year ago at Ravesthorpe!

Criticism over Abbott's kneejerk solution by Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Howes, is justified. “If (Abbott) genuinely thinks you are going to solve an economically crippling skills shortage by taking punitive measures against welfare recipients, he has clearly never lived in the real world,” Mr Howes said. “You can't just get any old Joe off the street and plonk them into a mine, and think that's going to mean they can work.”

The skills shortage in WA's resources sector is a direct result of short term profit taking by the mining companies failing to re-invest in skilling. It is a failure by both the companies and the WA and Queensland governments to adequately skills train between the resources booms.

Migration needs to be tied to Australia's carrying capacity. Part of that capacity is utilising our home grown unemployed first. I wager that of our current 611,000 unemployed, 300,000 could take on unskilled jobs while they seek the sought of work they want. That would be 300,000 less people on welfare, 300,000 less migrants, 300,000 more Australian happily contributing to the economy and to Australian society and 300,000 families of one sort or another not under stress. Consequential Australian social problems of homelessness, family breakdown, decline in physical and mental health, substance abuse, etc. would be in part addressed.

Migrants coming to Australia taking Australian jobs are at the same time abandoning their countries of origin and depriving their home countries of a workforce.