Hingerty: Mining boom will create tourism skills gap – and backpackers can help plug it
The Australian Tourism Export Council (ATEC) said today the National Resources Sector Employment Taskforce’s report into the future labour needs of the mining industry would have widespread ramifications for the services economy, including tourism.
The report found existing and planned projects would create 45,000 jobs in 2012 and 2013, mining operations would create 61,500 new jobs by 2015 and the resources sector could be short of 36,000 skilled tradespeople by 2015. It noted that “if these workers are recruited from other sectors there will be skills shortages in those industries”.
ATEC Managing Director Matthew Hingerty said this was proven true in the most recent mining boom, when frontline customer service positions such as chefs, waiters, tour guides and check-in staff were impacted.
He added: “At the height of the last boom it was not unknown for every tourism and hospitality business in towns in Queensland and Western Australia to be advertising for staff. What customers might not realise is that behind the frontline staff lies a huge workforce of sales staff, managers, IT experts, cleaners, labourers and tradespeople.”
Hingerty said many of the recommendations made by the taskforce to address shortages in the mining sector are applicable to tourism and the services economy, including the use of temporary migration.
“There are also other tourism-specific policies we can implement, such as further tweaking of the backpacker visas,” he added.
By Martin Lane · July 20th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Comments
22 Jul 10
4:40 pm
I have doubts about our sector getting much of a boost from jobs in the resources industry. Certainly not in sufficient numbers to bring on joyous backflips.
Reviewing some of the countries we presently offer the Working Holiday Visa to would give a massive fillip to our backpacker industry, as certain nationalities have shown too much of a tendency to do the “Work” part but not the “Holiday” bit as intended.
The spirit of this visa is to encourage young travellers to extend their time (and, thus, their spend) Down Under by working for a portion of their visit, allowing them to bolster often meager savings. I`m hearing from too many intending workers they have tried and tried to find jobs but failed miserably and, thus, must leave our shores prematurely.
The lack of farm/cleaning employment available for genuine WHV travellers due to these hard working, hard saving imposters, who send all their wages home, is a major cause of the past few slower seasons. If our young backpackers can`t find work here, they leave, too soon for all of us..
Too many backpackers can`t find a job in Tully or Innisfail due to large numbers of these ‘Super’ workers, who I can count in the hundreds in the above townships but never see in my hostel (or any other non-working destinations, for that matter).
Time to bite the bullet and reduce our quota offer of WHVs to the offending countries.
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