Top End attracts Irish workers

The Northern Territory, disadvantaged by its distance from the main population centres, has turned to Ireland, suffering from a deeply depressed economy, to fill its needs for workers.

In September a Territory delegation, including staff of the Department of Business and Employment and Master Builders NT, joined state representatives in staging a series of public meetings in Ireland to win immigrants.

On a chilly Sunday afternoon, they attracted hundreds of people to a Dublin hotel for one of three seminars held in the country.

Graham Kemp, of Master Builders NT, told the meeting that, with the highest population growth rate in Australia and an unemployment rate of 3 per cent, “there is unlimited opportunity for skilled workers in the Northern Territory”.

Rapid growth, he explained, has left the NT with a shortage of skilled trades and professions in construction, resources, tourism and defence.

Mary Martin, of the Business and Employment Department, extended the pitch to skilled Irish backpackers, encouraging them to use Australia’s working holiday program to obtain employment in the building, hospitality and health sectors.

Irish workers are particularly open to an invitation to migrate at present because, after two decades of prosperity that led to Ireland shifting from Europe’s laggard economy to the “Celtic Tiger”, growth has crashed in the global financial crisis.

The shattering of a 10-year property bubble, in which real estate prices increased threefold, and a national budget thrust deep into deficit has spurred 65,000 people to leave Ireland in a year. Many, however, are not Irish. They are workers and their families from eastern Europe, attracted to Ireland by the economic boom since the 1990s.

Australian state governments and the Territory are targeting the recently graduated generation of Irish who went to university or took up apprenticeships expecting to find local business competing for their talents but are left facing unemployment.

Irish media reports that one in three men under 25 is out of work today, compared with a 4.4 per cent unemployment rate in the construction boom.

With the unemployment figure predicted to exceed 13 per cent this year, Irish authorities are expecting 40,000 locals to migrate, a level last reached 30 years ago, and the Australian governments are keen to take advantage of the situation.

The Northern Territory delegation has talked up the tropical lifestyle in an effort to attract migrants.

“The Territory has a very laid-back lifestyle,” Kemp told the hundreds of people attracted to the three forums.

“We enjoy fishing, shooting and offroad driving.”

Pat Illidge, of the Chamber of Commerce NT, said: “Darwin is Australia’s only tropical capital city. Tourism is a key driver of the NT economy and always provides employment opportunities for tour operators, hospitality workers and other related industries.”

In a brochure on jobs in the Territory, Business and Employment Minister Rob Knight says the NT targeted attracting 10,000 apprentices and trainees joining the workforce between 2005 and 2009 and met its goal a year early. It is targeting obtaining another 10,000 by 2012.

The government says the Territory labour market has performed strongly in the past year, with unemployment lower than the national rate.

Demand for skilled workers remains high, although the level of vacancies being advertised is below the 2007-08 peak.