Australia will launch a inexperienced card-style visa poll to deliver 3000 Pacific employees and their households to the nation yearly.
Pacific Minister Pat Conroy mentioned the change to Australia’s everlasting migration system could be a “critical way” of enhancing, and constructing people-to-people hyperlinks with the Pacific household.
Legislation willbe launched into parliament on Thursday.
Applicants from Timor-Leste and Pacific island nations could be first chosen by poll, then have to safe a written supply for a full time job in Australia.
“It is revolutionary and it will deepen our ties to a region that is critical to our future,” he informed ABC News.
“This is part of (our) government using every lever of statecraft to increase our engagement in the region.
“We have increased our foreign aid to the Pacific, our military and security co-operation. We have 35,000 Pacific workers filling labour shortages here and sending back half a billion dollars of income to their communities every year.”
Mr Conroy mentioned the poll was along with the Pacific Australia labour mobility scheme, which gives work placements between 9 months and 4 years.
“The Pacific engagement visa we’re introducing today is different. This is about permanent migration,” he mentioned.
“This is allocating 3000 spots to Pacific families each year to make a new life in Australia, to deepen the Pacific diaspora in Australia and deepen our people-to-people links.
“Those people have to have jobs in this country and they can bring their families.”
The opposition’s overseas affairs spokeswoman Karen Andrews mentioned the Coalition acknowledged there was a “need” for expert and unskilled employees in Australia.
“Now, I have not received a briefing on that policy, but I would be very happy to be briefed on that policy position and how the government proposes that that will work,” she mentioned.
“I am open to looking at whatever solutions the government actually has to make sure that we continue to look at how we are going to meet the skilled workforce, the unskilled workers that are needed here in Australia, because it is critical.”
Source: www.perthnow.com.au