Wednesday, 9 March 2022

Skilled work regional visas

Ms KEALY (Lowan) (19:06): (6258) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Industry Support and Recovery, and the action that I am asking from the minister is that he apply for a greater allocation of 491 skilled work regional visas and match the allocation that New South Wales has—this is a process that is done by application to the federal government—to make sure that we can access an appropriate number of skilled migrant workers to access work and fill our jobs in regional Victoria.

We have got a number of job vacancies right throughout regional Victoria and throughout my electorate. What we find is our employment issue is not that we have not got jobs to go around; we actually have not got enough people to fill the job vacancies that are available. I have recently received a petition actually from a number of businesses in the Halls Gap region. Halls Gap is a small community. There are about 650 permanent residents, and they really do rely on the international travellers coming through to fill particularly the hospitality shifts but also to provide those day-to-day things to support their tourism industry, whether it is the cleaners that we might need or by running accommodation or even some of the tours that are done through the region. They just rely so heavily on backpackers, and we simply have not had those international visitors during the COVID pandemic with the borders being closed.

While those border closures are being lifted, we still have not seen the number of people coming through and visiting Halls Gap that the Halls Gap community need to be able to fill all of the jobs and give people a good tourist experience when they come to town. There is nothing worse, and I think that really the business owners feel like they are letting down the tourism community when they are not able to serve enough people. There are complaints arising from it—people become very agitated if they cannot get a meal locally—and they feel like it reflects badly not just on their own business but on the entire community.

I have also had similar concerns raised by hospitals in my region, Casterton Memorial Hospital and also West Wimmera Health Service, where they simply have not been able to support international staff who have come to Australia because the state has run out of the 491 visas to allocate to these workers.

Just for comparison’s sake, Victoria has 500 visas it can allocate per year. This is about 4 per cent of the total number of 491 visas available across the nation, and if you compare that with New South Wales, they have got an allocation of 3640 491 visas—that is 29 per cent. As I said, this is around a process of the state stepping up and making representation to the federal government and asking for those visas, so that is what I am asking the minister to do. I am asking him to acknowledge there is a real skills shortage in regional Victoria. Those businesses in Halls Gap are really struggling to fill these jobs. Can we please apply to— (Time expired)