Influencing the Influencers

Six days after the poll, and Australians are still shaking their heads that we have no clear result, other than a hung parliament. Both leaders of the main two parties are busy talking to the long-term three independents and even seriously considering their first log of claims. The fourth independent will be holding his first batch of discussions tomorrow but has already indicated he won’t be joining his three colleagues (disparagingly known in some circles as the ‘hayseed amigoes’), rather will go it alone – or independently. The first and only Green member of the Lower House is in the mix too, though he is backed by a very experienced leader in Bob Brown and his merry band of Greens in the Senate (likely to be nine).

What we can say is that this will be the era of the regions. Australia’s regional centres usually complain that they get forgotten in favour of the cities and suburbs when it comes to infra structure and other goodie spending. Not any more. The three independents are all ‘country’ members. At least one, Bob Katter from Queensland, has said he is in it for ‘whatever it takes’ to improve the lot of his electorate. Besides the expected pork barrelling that comes with bargaining for power, industry analysts and even the Bureau of Statistics are saying that Australia needs to do more to attract skilled workers to its regional centres.

The problem is that we don’t have many workers to go round. We are at risk of deepening the long-standing skills shortage particularly in the remote regions where there is currently a lot of private investment underway developing mines and other resource projects. Even the housing construction sector says it has major shortages in about eight of the 13 housing trades. All this makes a mockery of the major parties’ unedifying scramble to appear more anti-migration than the other during the recent election campaign.  Analysts note that despite the politicians hyperbole, even unskilled migrants usually associated with the group known as ‘humanitarian migrants’ (aka, refugees) are vital in any skills shortage, as this group is historically more likely to work in non-skilled labouring jobs that skilled migrants – and locals – won’t take up.

None of this should be a surprise. The recent mining boom in Western Australia, Queensland and even South Australia gave us plenty of warning of what happens when skilled labour is in short supply. That includes the knock on effect such a demand has on other industries whose workers are lured away by the higher wages miners can offer. So why then did the parties listen to the screeching focus groups and not the industry bodies who have been issuing the warnings?