I see in Australia (especially cities like Sydney and Melbourne) that many types of small businesses like coffee shops, restaurants, traffic control companies, construction companies, bars, pubs, charity fundraising companies, telemarketing companies, farms, etc are employing vast numbers of people on work and holiday visas (i.e. backpackers) when these are mostly low skilled jobs that could be done by locals. The reason the businesses do this for the most part is they know they can treat these people worse then local workers and pay them less. So we have all these unemployed young locals losing out on work to backpackers which is disgraceful. I get the concept that backpackers travel around the country and so their spending is more spread across the economy and smaller towns/cities welcome this additional tourist spending. However there are better ways (which I will touch on shortly) to boost tourist spending. We should just get rid of the work and holiday visa. Its a useless and economically destructive visa. However if Australia wants to boost tourism what they should do instead is make it easier for people from all countries to get a tourist visa. For most people without an E.U. or OECD country passport getting a tourist visa to Australia is a pain in the ass. Sometimes even wealthy well established foreigners (who would have no reason to become illegal immigrants) applications are basically knocked back due to being from the "wrong" country. I have seen first hand wealthy foreign business men get a tourist visa knocked back because they were from the "wrong" country! Tourist visas are a discretionary visa whereby there are no strictly defined criteria and the case officer can knock it back without a valid reason. This system needs to change where there must be clearly defined criteria and they must not be able to knock the visa back without a valid reason. p.s. I am not xenophobic. Giving a job to a foreigner who is now a permanent resident or giving a job to a foreigner on a work visa (e.g. 457 visa) for a job type where there is a shortage of relevant skilled/experienced workers often makes sense. Giving low skilled jobs to backpackers makes zero sense for the economy at large.
I think you're wrong in some aspects, many Aussies on the dole and who cant find a job prefer to stay on the dole. People say they want to work in "whatever the job" and foreigners take the local jobs but my personal experience in this is totally wrong. People who wants a job gets a job full stop it does not matter if they are local, on holiday visa or illegal immigrant. Ask an unemployed person regardless of age, gender or qualification -> will they take a full time job washing dishes or cleaning after hours and commit to at least 6 months? They get minimum wage and penalties.
One of my businesses employs people on working holiday visas (and employer sponsored visas, and locals). In my experience at least, it doesn't exactly work like that. All of those kinds of jobs you mentioned are indeed low-skilled jobs, which is why they're attractive to working holiday tourists and unattractive to locals. Again, this is only my experience, but working holiday-type job applicants will say upfront "I want a job for six months while I'm in the city and then I'm planning on going on a road trip around the country". Basically, they arrive with a bit of (foreign) money, earn enough to live, go out a bit, see the sights, meet people, party a bit, maybe save up a little extra money and then go off and spend it on the "holiday" part of their trip. More often than not, they leave with less money than they arrived with. Locals, on the other hand, will say "Yeah, I'm totally committed and really want to work here and get experience" and then leave after six months when they find someone who'll offer them a more attractive roster (well, initially anyway) and/or a title bump, or an entry level job in the field they actually studied at uni. Basically, people on working holiday visas want job security for a short period of time with a little flexibility and locals want job security for as long as it takes them to find a better job. It's totally understandable: many businesses treat workers as disposable, and these are all typically jobs that young people work in so young people treat the jobs as disposable in return. The businesses themselves that offer these kinds of jobs aren't exactly blue chip employers either. Many are marginal enterprises and go broke after a while, so it's not like the cafe owner working 12 hour days themselves is able to commit to offering anyone a 2 year barista trainee-ship, followed by a 3 years as a floor manager and then a position as a store manager in a new franchise location. If you really want a career in a low-skilled occupation like hospitality or labouring, there are good employers out there who want reliable, hardworking staff. My advice would be not to hand over a CV that shows you have "experience" in the kind of position you're applying for because you change jobs every 4-8 months. Oh, and spell the name of your school correctly too, else your CV gets binned and Leena from Finland gets the job instead (true story).
I promise you guys for every cafe owner etc that hired a backpacker after advertising the job on their shop window or on gumtree etc that plenty of locals applied for that job (its not a case of lazy locals not applying a job) but for whatever reason they hired the backpacker. I have met and spoken to young foreign girls working in Australian coffee shops (obviously when they were not at work) or Thai restaurants that were being paid as low as $12 AUD per hour cash in hand. Gee, I wonder why those businesses did not want to hire locals. The other reason is that some of the young backpacker girls are attractive and cafe's, bars, etc for image purposes prefer to have attractive young girls working there. The reality is that any business that pays market rates will find young locals willing and able to work that job. IpV6 are you saying that the coffee shops that pay minimum wage and that have all these backpackers working there did not get any young locals applying for the job? If you are saying that I call bullshit on that.
Big A.D. what you are saying about backpackers is true but it misses the point. Let's say for example a regular tourist comes for one month to Australia with $6000 AUD to spend. A typical backpacker for example might come with for example $6000 AUD to spend to tide them over until they find a job. Then whatever money they earn working in Australia they spend in Australia. Backpackers don't usually come to Australia hugely cashed up, they usually come with a modest amount of cash. So in terms of money they brought from outside the country most of the time they are not bringing vast sums that are hugely greater than other types of tourists. However if they had not worked a local would have had their job and also spent the money in the local economy. The only difference is that with backpackers the composition of the spending is different (i.e. more of the money gets spent in small tourist towns, on tours, at nightclubs, etc). My point is that there are better ways to boost tourism spending without taking jobs away from young locals. For example making it easier for foreigners from a wide variety of countries to get a tourist visa in Australia would boost tourism hugely. Also why is it that every time in the newspapers or on TV whenever you see some scandal about workers being underpaid most of the time its either small business hiring backpackers or franchised business (e.g. Dominos Pizza, 7/11, etc) hiring foreign students? Its not just an issue of pay its an issue of working conditions as well. I noticed businesses that hire backpackers or foreign students are far more likely to treat workers badly for example only giving them there roster for the next week every Sunday night, or even only letting them know they are working one day in advance, changing their shifts last minute, sending people home early (to save on wages) when its quiet, threatening to replace people if they do not agree to work on a certain day because they are busy, etc. They know if they try to pull this crap with locals, most locals will not put up with it for too long. From personal observation I can say that although its not always the case, the majority of the time when a business is hiring large numbers of backpackers or foreign students they are usually up to no good.
Your assumption is not valid. In my region pineapple farmers value the temporary workers as they are guaranteed a workforce for a specific period of time i.e. they can be planned for and relied upon, unlike many of the locals who may be attracted to fruit picking who are far from reliable for various reasons. It makes perfect sense to a farmer who requires short term workers for the picking season, as a result, it is beneficial for the economy at large.
Also Ivp6Ready what you are saying is only partially true. Yes people that want to work will eventually get a job but it could take a long time. Its quite normal that due to the level of competition for jobs it could take a young local 3-6 months of earnest job searching for a young unskilled local to find work. I have previously worked for a number of large retailers and I can tell you for every entry level person they hired they had somewhere between 100 and 500 applicants (depending on the company, the time of year, the pay, etc). If we didn't have so many low paid/unskilled foreigners working here maybe the unskilled young locals looking for a job could find one in a month instead of looking for 4 months.
Mmmm...shiney! Most regional areas/towns have high levels of unemployment and there are plenty of able bodied young people that would work those farming/seasonal jobs. Having spoken to a number of backpackers over the years because of the system whereby backpackers can extend their work and holiday visa for a further 12 months (i.e. 2 years instead of one year) if they work 3 months on a farm, the farmers know that they can and will do any kind of work for any pay just to get the visa extension. So then you have scams like farmers paying per bucket of fruit for example (as opposed to per hour) but they pay so little per bucket that people end up working for $5 an hour but they stick it out to get the visa extension. Or you have farmers that will pay people $15 per hour and only give them 4 hours a day work and then charge them $250 per week for crappy shared accommodation in the middle of nowhere. Just ask any backpacker that has spent two years in Australia. They will have plenty of stories to tell you about this kind of stuff.
Level of spending is not an indicator of a healthy economy nor is it an individual’s contribution, regardless of whether it is $6000 or $6 million. When someone is paid to work, both the employer and the employee gain a net benefit and wealth is enhanced, which benefits all.
mmm.......shiney if that's your view how about we give 2 million poor people a year come from China and India work visas so they can come to Australia and work in every Domino's, 7/11, restaurant and coffee shop for $10 AUD cash per hour. Does that benefit all? Of course I am using reductio ad absurdum to illustrate my point but my basic premise still stands. What we should aim for in Australia is targeting more wealthy (or at least middle class) high end tourists that spend big and foreigners that come here to do live and to do business and create jobs. If we focus on making it easier and more attractive for the investor/businessmen with 2 or 3 million dollars to invest to get a permanent residency and do business in Australia isn't that much better than just bringing in a bunch of backpackers who take jobs away from young locals? What about all the upper middle class people that are from poor countries and want to come to Australia for a holiday but can't get a tourist visa? Just ask a Ukrainian or Peruvian, etc even when they have lots of money how hard it is to get a tourist visa to Australia. Its retarded difficult. Why don't we scrap the backpacker visas and get more of these types of people in?
Fruit picking is a thankless job. Farmers need a reliable workforce for a specific time, unemployed locals who would be attracted to fruit picking in the main would not be reliable, foreign workers on organised working visits are reliable and in the case of the local pine industry, often repeat visitors.
I am in favour of importing cheap labour and freeing up the labour market for a host of reasons. If your basic conclusion is that wealth is generated by spending, then it doesn’t stand. I’m more than happy to explain myself in greater detail, but I’m at work at the moment.
mmm....shiney I am not saying that wealth is generated by spending (although in the case that money is brought in from outside the country and spent in Australia that is importing wealth into our country) but my point is that we don't live in a free market world. Just for example because you allow cheap Chinese labour to flood your country does not mean that the Chinese will be fair and abolish all import tarriffs on the goods we export to them, allow millions of Australians to easily work as expats in China, etc. 100% free trade and 100% open borders/migration only works if everybody plays by the same rules on an even playing field. But that is not the way the world works currently. There are different rules in different countries. That is the major flaw in your premise. One country being protectionist while their trading partner is 100% free trade and open borders does not work very well.
Besides mmm....shiney! you are putting the cart before the horse. If the government first cut business taxes and red tape, etc that created a business/job boom then perhaps we would be at the point that we would have enough supply of jobs that we could start allowing large numbers of foreigners to work in Australia. But if you stifle business with high taxes and red tape and difficult to obtain business visas (all of which we do in Australia) which causes low investment and job scarcity and then at the same time flood the country with cheap labour you will just end up having hundreds of people competing for every crappy job and pushing wages down to poverty levels. Without a strong supply of jobs wages will just collapse if you import large numbers of cheap foreign workers. Our economy and job market is simply not robust enough currently to absorb masses of foreign workers without pushing wages down to poverty/slavery levels.
Meanwhile in Australia while we are letting backpackers in by the tens of thousands to take the jobs of young locals we have many cashed up tourists from non OECD countries being denied tourist visas to Australia (I have seen/heard of many cases first hand), as well as businessmen looking to invest millions of dollars who get denied a business or investor visa.
I'm not saying your wrong and I am 100% correct. What I am saying is that many jobs are not wanted by Aussie as not worth it. The reason why I talked about cleaning offices after hours and cleaning dishes in a restaurant is because I had investments in those businesses as a sideline from my day job in IT. I was approached by friends to give their sons, daughters, nephews ago. I explained to them that these are thankless jobs, pays minimum, but for a uni student, it good pay. They all said their kid is hard working etc etc etc, problem was many were unreliable. Because they got paid minimum wage, they treated the job as beneath them. but I also appreciate that it's not a career, part time dishwashing upward path is full time dishwashing. I'm just saying that is my experience.
Money is not wealth, so regardless of whether we have rich tourists or not, wealth is not imported in the form of money so we have to produce our way to wealth. Scrupulous business operators utilising foreign labour as opposed to domestic labour do so for a number of reasons, but essentially, the business owner employs the foreign worker more skilfully and more efficiently than he can a domestic worker. Whether this is because they work faster, are prettier, have interesting accents, commit to an agreed upon employment period or the cost of employing foreign labour can be offset by providing meals and accommodation, when a business owner employs a foreign worker at the expense of a local worker, there is a gain in productivity that is not present when using domestic labour. And because of our inflexible labour regulations, the domestic worker in some industries remains an unattractive employment prospect. If by decree business owners were forced to employ domestic workers instead of foreign workers, there would be a decline in productivity which would hamper our prosperity. True, but beggar-thy-neighbour policies are not being debated here. Allowing cheap foreign labour into this country would mean that many business owners could expand their businesses with less cost, thereby lowering prices for consumers. As an example, if we could employ Asian housekeepers and baby sitters, offsetting some of the cost of wages with meals and accommodation, thousands of working mums and dads would find that they would have more time to devote to being productive, instead of spending time in traffic jams on the way to day care centres as well as also having more money. The protectionist country would suffer, not the free-trade country as you suggest. History is testament to that. A multi-disciplinary approach would be the best means to enhancing economic freedom. Restricting employment say by only employing locals is not a tool used to achieve that goal. Remember, unacceptable levels of unemployment are the result of a discrepancy between what an employer is willing to pay for labour and what he is forced to pay. Wages should reflect the value that labour adds to the production process, not what central planners think a burger flipper should be paid. For example the minimum wage contributes to lowering the employment level and earnings, particularly of the low paid and unskilled. You'll find the rise of cities provides the evidence that refutes your position. Villages then as they grew, towns, which grew to cities have absorbed millions of people over time and the average income of city workers is now far higher than most regional workers, not because of protectionist policies but because masses of workers supplied their labour to entrepreneurs. This in turn enhanced productivity gains and the wealth of city dwellers, especially when compared to non-city dwellers (though rural citizens do benefit in the long run from the increasing levels of wealth of city folk). Say's Law explains it at its most fundamental: in order to buy goods we firstly have to produce something. Foreign workers allow business owners in some industries to produce more goods than they would if that labour supply were unavailable or solely restricted to domestic labour. As a result, the increased level of production means that there is an increased demand, which results in increased levels of production and employment.
I dont see any numbers he E I dont think its a useless visa for Australia. Around 200K people a year using a lot of services also paying a handful $420 visa fee if not more doing good for Australia. I dont quiet get your. There is no solid argument on how if any Aussies left out on getting a job due to the work holiday people. I also agree with you road work and construction and fruit picking mostly done by o seas workforce. Construction I guess not mostly but other 2 yes. You are more than welcomed to write to fairwork or ATO or immigration if you can see illegal activites in their work. I am seriously fed up at this immigrants took all the work mentality. Australian gouvernement and rich making huge amounts of cash out of all of us and some of us choose to blame it on Work holiday visas. Now that is a cheap shot. I personally wish those people never ever come here to waste their life in this misarable land and also make some cash and pay 32.5% tax in it to make us and some others richer. As if jobless will be employed asap. 200k of people paying nearly $500 for visa $500 for medical insurance $1500 for return air tickets and airport tax Accomodation Rent Gas Electricity Food of any kind Alcohol ciggy Gambling Transportation Salvation Army 200K means a lot to Australia and you should realize that Australia is not helping them but they are helping Australia
Yes, but that's also why they can take a $14/hour cash-in-hand job at a cafe: they're burning through $100/week more than they're making. That's fine for a backpacker because they were always intending to spend the money, but it doesn't work for a local because it's not a sustainable income model. All you can say for certain is that a crappy job exists at $14/hour. There's nothing to say that same job exists at $18.81/hour, plus 50% penalty rate loading, plus 9.5% super, plus annual leave, plus any other oncosts. Now, in my humble opinion, if you can't afford to pay people properly, you shouldn't be in business in the first place and that's what I build into my own business models, but I'm not trying to do Pad Thai $8 lunch specials either. There's no reason we can't make the paperwork easier for tourists anyway, but not everyone is a cashed-up middle class holiday maker with a spare four weeks and $10k to blow on an expensive Australian "experience". There's a wide variety of people in the world and we need a wide variety of people with different levels of income to participate in the economy in different ways, which is why I think rising inequality is a structural issue that runs a hell of a lot deeper than just cracking down on people at the bottom end like backpackers and refugees.
I think in general Australia has its whole migration system ass backwards. Most of the migrants coming to Australia come to eventually get a job and work here. Meanwhile we make it unnecessarily difficult for business people and investors to come and live/invest here. If you look at what countries like Panama, Malaysia, Thailand, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, etc do they give lot's of incentives like tax breaks, easy visas/residency, even pensioner discounts for certain services, etc for people that want to start a business or invest or come and spend their money (e.g. pensioners) in the country but they make it really hard for foreigners to get a work permit. Australia does the opposite of those countries. We make it hard for investment to come but we make it easy for people to come and take our jobs. For example lets say we got rid of the work and holiday visa and drastically reduced the number of skilled migration visas, etc and instead we made it easier and more attractive for foreign investors and business people and wealthy pensioners to come and live in Australia. We could replace a lot of workers with business people and investors who create jobs instead of competing with locals for existing jobs. For example Australia lets in all these foreigners but our infrastructure is not keeping up with population growth. How about for example we put a special type of investor subclass visa where if a foreigner can pass a police check and invests $1 million AUD into approved residential property development (I am sure property developers would quickly assemble funds/schemes for them to invest in) or into a government public private partnership infrastructure investment fund, or an approved tourism or agriculture business, etc then they get automatic permanent residency. We could even give them tax breaks for their investments. Or what about a pensioner/investor visa where foreigners can get limited permanent residency where if they can show a certain amount of passive or location independent income they can come and live in Australia but they do not get access to medicare or centre-link, etc. And Mmm...shiney! Before you say "why don't we just make it easier for everybody to come to Australia?" well if we let in too many people we will become an overcrowded, over-polluted, traffic congested hellhole like many countries in the world are. I think most people would agree that kind of decline in quality of life is not what they want. Even if you could argue it would generate more economic growth. Does anybody really think Sydney or Melbourne would be better places to live if they each had 10 million people? I sure as hell would not want to live long term in a polluted congested mega city of 10 or 15 million people. I think rather than letting more people into Australia we just need to change the mix of who we let in. Less (prospective) employees and more business owners, investors, and pensioners, and (pure) tourists. Also in Australia the government needs to approve, fast track and encourage more investment into casinos,hotels, nightclubs, tourism businesses, etc We are way behind a lot of other countries on these fronts. For example removing lockout laws in Sydney, making it easier to get a liquor license, making it easier for companies to get a casino license (i.e. none of this exclusive packer type monopolies), fast tracking development approvals for new hotels and carparks, etc. If we do this sort of stuff and have a Vegas style casino strip somewhere, have more lively and famous nightclubs, etc maybe some of the high rolling gamblers and businessmen would take a vacation to Australia instead of going to Macau, etc. Barrangaroo is a start but we need to do a lot more.
