Room for more migrants:
Costello
06/04/2006 Herald-Sun
FEDERAL
Treasurer Peter Costello says skilled migration
could increase in the light of low unemployment
figures released today, but he won't say by how
much.
The labour force figures showed the jobless rate
fell to five per cent in March, from 5.2 per cent
in February.
"I think it's possible to run an increased
immigration program focussing on skills. I'm not
going to put a number on it," Mr Costello told
reporters in Melbourne today.
He said the government had lifted the immigration
intake quite considerably in recent years, and focussed
on skilled migrants because of a skills shortage
in Australia and because the new arrivals were more
likely to secure jobs.
"So I think we can continue to run a pretty
strong migration program with figures like this,
but bear in mind of course that we are also looking
to get Australians born here in work," Mr Costello
said.
Opposition
Leader Kim Beazley yesterday said the Howard
government had increased skilled migration at the
expense of training Australians and therefore had
created a skills shortage.
Mr Beazley said he would invest more in training
to address the skills shortage in Australia if he
won the next election.
The federal government had brought in an additional
270,000 skilled migrants, while 300,000 people had
been turned away from TAFE
institutions since 1998, Mr Beazley said.
When asked if the Coalition was being hurt by its
policy on skilled migration, Mr Costello today said
the government was focussed on training Australians
but importing skills was an interim solution.
Mr Costello blamed the states for the present shortage,
saying they had made a disastrous mistake in closing
technical colleges.
"Now the Commonwealth is going to bring them
back and we are going to give them a prestige that
they didn't have in the past," he said.
"We are going to set up technical colleges
to get skills going, but all of this takes time.
"If you start at an Australian technical college
in year 11 today, it's going to be four, five or
six years before you are fully trained and out in
the workforce.
"So you do have to make some of this up with
migration, but it should never be to the detriment
of young Australians having an opportunity."
A Productivity Commission report released in January
found Australia should significantly increase its
level of skilled migrants to make the workforce
more highly qualified.
The report into the economic impacts of migration
and population growth advocated an increase of 50
per cent on skilled migrant levels of 2004-05.
No battling this bulging
coastline
Amanda Hodge April 05, 2006
The
Australian
FOR those who have never lived there, the Gold
Coast is an intriguing experiment in regional gigantism.
With almost 500,000 residents - more than the state
of Tasmania - squeezed into a coastal belt just
50km from Brisbane, the popular impression is of
a high-rise city too big for its bones.
Yet new figures show the Gold Coast added 12,600
people to its population last year and is planning
to accommodate a further 250,000 in the next 20
years.
"Seachange on steroids" is how National
Seachange Taskforce chief Alan Stokes describes
it.
"It's just an extraordinary story," he
said.
"The number of people going into the Gold
Coast every year is almost equivalent to the whole
of Port
Douglas. It is a national phenomenon."
This phenomenon reflects an unrelenting drift to
coastal regions outside Australia's major cities.
New Australian
Bureau of Statistics population figures show
predictions of a slowdown in the seachange trend
has failed to eventuate.
Queensland and West Australian coastal councils
are growing at double and triple the national 1.2
per cent average, respectively.
Wanneroo
Shire Council, north of Perth, took in an extra
7094 residents last financial year, lifting its
total population 7.1per cent to 112,000.
South of Perth, Mandurah grew by 5.9per cent and
in Queensland, Hervey Bay grew by 4.8 per cent.
Overall coastal growth rates are 60per cent higher
than the national average.
Taskforce chair Joe Natoli says growth is being
driven by factors such as a shift from manufacturing
to information and service industries, a desire
for a better lifestyle and the high cost of housing
in capital cities.
The latter two were powerful motivators for Errol
Stratton, a 33-year-old marine electrician, who
moved with his pregnant wife Effie and their two
young children from Auckland last September when
his employer opened an office in the booming Gold
Coast boat-building industry.
Two weeks ago, the Strattons moved into their very
first home.
"It's fantastic, we could never have bought
in Auckland," Mr Stratton said yesterday.
"All around us there are young families. Every
night I get home from work and I'm able to put the
kids in the strollers and we go for a lovely walk
along the Coomera River. There's no high-rises,
just a few fishermen.
"There's so much growth -- you can feel it
and you're aware of all the opportunity."
Gold
Coast Deputy Mayor David Power said the Strattons
reflected not only the continued coastal shift but
a marked demographic change in the region.
In four years, the average age of a Gold Coast
resident has dropped by six years to just 33.
"We're no longer God's waiting room,"
he said triumphantly.
"A lot of people don't realise that 25per
cent of the city is available for urban development
and the rest is conservation and agriculture.
"We're constantly criticised but if we're
so bad, why do they keep coming?"
