Ms LAWRIE - 2004-02-18
Could you please advise the House on steps this government is taking to help Territory business grow and attract skilled workers to the Territory?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Karama, for the question. As Minister for Business and Industry, as I move around the Territory talking to Territory business, and also through forums such as the Chief Minister’s Business Round Table, an issue that comes through loud and clear across the Territory is the capacity and difficulty of attracting and keeping a skilled work force in the Northern Territory. The government is taking a three-staged approach to try to work with business in the Northern Territory to deal with these issues.
My colleague, the Minister for Employment, Education and Training announced the first one a few weeks ago, which was the Jobs Plan., with substantial money - $160m – seeking to train 7000 apprentices, particularly in those hard to get blue collar areas, given the industrial activity that is about to take place in the Northern Territory.
The Chief Minister’s investment campaign around the Northern Territory has led to significant numbers of people in the work force in the rest of Australia contacting Territory business. From getting around and talking to business in the Territory, I know of a couple in Alice Springs who have advertised interstate quite consistently. Since the Chief Minister’s investment campaign kicked off, the number of job applications they are getting from interstate have gone up quite dramatically.
The third area is looking at skilled and professional migration. It is an area that there has not been a lot of focus on over the last few years, and it is the third plank of our attempts to attract a skilled work force to the Northern Territory.
Last month, I released a draft version of the government’s five-year business and skilled migration strategy. It is a consultative document to go out to the business community and our ethnic groups in the Northern Territory, with a range of options where government can work through those associations and with individual businesses and business associations to promote the Northern Territory as a great place to come if you are a skilled or business migrant.
At the moment, if you look at our profile, we are 1% of Australia’s population, but only attract 0.2% of Australia’s overall migrant intake every year. If we were to be representative at 1%, that would be 600 additional Territorians every year to the Northern Territory. We are working with our business community and ethnic associations to understand what we can do to promote the Northern Territory. We will be holding community consultations across the Northern Territory. I urge all members to have a look at the strategy and engage their constituents in this process. The strategy will assist Territory business by broadening our skills base, increasing the diversity of our economic base, and creating new and improved links.
An exciting development, I am pleased to announce today is that, for the first time in eight years, the Territory is participating in international migration exhibitions. A senior officer from my department leaves this afternoon for China and Taiwan to participate in a business and skilled migration promotion. Next month, the same officer will travel to Surrey in the UK to participate in Emigrate 2004, the largest migration exhibition in Europe attracting 15 000 people over three days. We are out there selling the Territory to the world as a great place to come to as a migrant, and Territorians take great pride in the contribution that migrants have made to this wonderful place we call home in the Northern Territory.
I urge the opposition to stop talking down and attacking southerners. This line about ‘we do not want southerners coming to the Northern Territory, we should not be giving southerners jobs’ is absolutely offensive and counterproductive to what business is saying in the Northern Territory: that we need a skilled work force, we need to keep a skilled work force. Yes, we need to train our own and we are training our own. However, we also need to get out there and promote the Northern Territory as a wonderful place to come and live, not only interstate, to those southerners that the opposition derides. I was surprised to hear the new Leader of the Opposition putting out a press release yesterday attacking the government for employing southerners. That is an offence to every business out there as well that employs somebody from interstate.
Again, in a spirit of bipartisanship, I would hope the new Leader of the Opposition is out there saying that he has policies, even though they are pretty flimsy and they do not have any depth or costing to them, the ones that are have holes right through them. There is a challenge, Leader of the Opposition, you talk a lot about engaging with Asia. The one thing that has damaged Australia, and set Australia back for years in Asia, when you travel through Asia, is the way that One Nation got off and running in Australia and was put down by our Prime Minister.
In the last election, the CLP preferenced One Nation. I would hope that the new Leader of the Opposition, in a policy commitment, would commit today to never preferencing One Nation again in the Northern Territory because it does irreparable harm overseas.
Mr ELFERINK: A point of order, Madam Speaker! Relevance.
Madam SPEAKER: Relevance to the question, yes, and length.
Mr HENDERSON: Irreparable harm, Madam Speaker. We are proud to call for Australians to come and make the Territory their home. We are proud to go overseas and ask potential migrants to come to the Northern Territory and make it their home, and I would urge the opposition to get onboard with us.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Karama, for the question. As Minister for Business and Industry, as I move around the Territory talking to Territory business, and also through forums such as the Chief Minister’s Business Round Table, an issue that comes through loud and clear across the Territory is the capacity and difficulty of attracting and keeping a skilled work force in the Northern Territory. The government is taking a three-staged approach to try to work with business in the Northern Territory to deal with these issues.
My colleague, the Minister for Employment, Education and Training announced the first one a few weeks ago, which was the Jobs Plan., with substantial money - $160m – seeking to train 7000 apprentices, particularly in those hard to get blue collar areas, given the industrial activity that is about to take place in the Northern Territory.
The Chief Minister’s investment campaign around the Northern Territory has led to significant numbers of people in the work force in the rest of Australia contacting Territory business. From getting around and talking to business in the Territory, I know of a couple in Alice Springs who have advertised interstate quite consistently. Since the Chief Minister’s investment campaign kicked off, the number of job applications they are getting from interstate have gone up quite dramatically.
The third area is looking at skilled and professional migration. It is an area that there has not been a lot of focus on over the last few years, and it is the third plank of our attempts to attract a skilled work force to the Northern Territory.
Last month, I released a draft version of the government’s five-year business and skilled migration strategy. It is a consultative document to go out to the business community and our ethnic groups in the Northern Territory, with a range of options where government can work through those associations and with individual businesses and business associations to promote the Northern Territory as a great place to come if you are a skilled or business migrant.
At the moment, if you look at our profile, we are 1% of Australia’s population, but only attract 0.2% of Australia’s overall migrant intake every year. If we were to be representative at 1%, that would be 600 additional Territorians every year to the Northern Territory. We are working with our business community and ethnic associations to understand what we can do to promote the Northern Territory. We will be holding community consultations across the Northern Territory. I urge all members to have a look at the strategy and engage their constituents in this process. The strategy will assist Territory business by broadening our skills base, increasing the diversity of our economic base, and creating new and improved links.
An exciting development, I am pleased to announce today is that, for the first time in eight years, the Territory is participating in international migration exhibitions. A senior officer from my department leaves this afternoon for China and Taiwan to participate in a business and skilled migration promotion. Next month, the same officer will travel to Surrey in the UK to participate in Emigrate 2004, the largest migration exhibition in Europe attracting 15 000 people over three days. We are out there selling the Territory to the world as a great place to come to as a migrant, and Territorians take great pride in the contribution that migrants have made to this wonderful place we call home in the Northern Territory.
I urge the opposition to stop talking down and attacking southerners. This line about ‘we do not want southerners coming to the Northern Territory, we should not be giving southerners jobs’ is absolutely offensive and counterproductive to what business is saying in the Northern Territory: that we need a skilled work force, we need to keep a skilled work force. Yes, we need to train our own and we are training our own. However, we also need to get out there and promote the Northern Territory as a wonderful place to come and live, not only interstate, to those southerners that the opposition derides. I was surprised to hear the new Leader of the Opposition putting out a press release yesterday attacking the government for employing southerners. That is an offence to every business out there as well that employs somebody from interstate.
Again, in a spirit of bipartisanship, I would hope the new Leader of the Opposition is out there saying that he has policies, even though they are pretty flimsy and they do not have any depth or costing to them, the ones that are have holes right through them. There is a challenge, Leader of the Opposition, you talk a lot about engaging with Asia. The one thing that has damaged Australia, and set Australia back for years in Asia, when you travel through Asia, is the way that One Nation got off and running in Australia and was put down by our Prime Minister.
In the last election, the CLP preferenced One Nation. I would hope that the new Leader of the Opposition, in a policy commitment, would commit today to never preferencing One Nation again in the Northern Territory because it does irreparable harm overseas.
Mr ELFERINK: A point of order, Madam Speaker! Relevance.
Madam SPEAKER: Relevance to the question, yes, and length.
Mr HENDERSON: Irreparable harm, Madam Speaker. We are proud to call for Australians to come and make the Territory their home. We are proud to go overseas and ask potential migrants to come to the Northern Territory and make it their home, and I would urge the opposition to get onboard with us.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016