Buzzy--Bee

Apologies if this has been posted before.....

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinio...166380177.html



Buzzy

geordie mandy

A very good article and quite thought provoking. I notice the ommision of any British migrants examples being used as a cab driver.
Mandy

Vash the Stampede

It's a standard op-ed piece, with all the usual fallacies and equivocations.

The claims she makes on the first page have little relevance to the recommendations (with which I whole-heartedly agree, BTW) that she makes on the second. And I sincerely doubt that Australia's capital cities are crammed with post-graduate taxi drivers, factory workers and cleaning staff. There may be a few, but I think she's exaggerating the problem. In any case, I doubt that any of them would be British.

I have no idea what the Muslim tangent was all about; it didn't seem to fit in anywhere.

She could have saved a lot of time and effort by simply typing out the last fourteen sentences and submitting it to publication.

That would have been a point well made and a job well done.

HiddenPaw

The article is an abridged version of a longer piece (a speech) - that's why it seems rather disjointed in places.

I don't believe she is implying that the majority of taxi drivers are highly qualified - she actually said that a large number of cab drivers who have recently migrated are highly qualified. In other words, migrants are struggling to get work in the professions that they are skilled in - yet many of them will be here on skilled visas.

The claims she makes on the first page are examples of how the system is ineffective - and her recommendations aim to improve the efficacy of said system. How did you miss that?

jad n rich

One big thing they could do to improve migrants chances is to make sure they are honestly informed of where the skill shortage is.

Migrants flock to the cities, yet the jobs employers cant fill are usually in rural/remote areas where aussies dont want to go. Yet migrants seem unaware of this till they arrive and study the job markets.

Australia has little problem filling the city/coastal jobs with its own workers. Bringing migrants to most cities is just compounding the problem. Sydney for a start has been quite vocal about this.

BadgeIsBack

Article has a point, but I see a big Asian middle class in IT in Melbourne.

Vanessa

I use taxis at night on a regular basis, usually from town to home. Most of the drivers are young asians and when you speak to them, nearly all are here studying or have come having finished their degrees and are looking for work, mainly in IT. Different story during the day.

the one thing that pi**** me off though is that they don't know their way around - with the exception of a few most don't know where Beaumaris is even when you say it is Bayside past Brighton!

jond

[QUOTE=Vanessa]I use taxis at night on a regular basis, usually from town to home. Most of the drivers are young asians and when you speak to them, nearly all are here studying or have come having finished their degrees and are looking for work, mainly in IT. Different story during the day.



I agree, the one I had the other night was a real nice Sikh gentleman who is a chartered accountant.

Amazulu

That might be the case in Brisbane but it certainly isn't the case in Perth. Massive skills shortage in this city.

jad n rich

Obviously certain areas of australia boom at certain times, SE qld was 3 years ago, 7 years ago probably sydney/melb and so on....... if you look around the mining towns in QLD you will find pretty much the same gold rush as is in perth at the mo, dont know why people think WA is the only place to produce resources.

So the obvious aside, most of australias skilled shortage is out back out west out east and woop woop. Now that includes plenty of the jobs in WA, people often mention they can earn $100,000 in the mines, but do they mention its up to 1600 klm from perth, which sometimes in the UK people think is about the only bit of WA, despite it being one third (approx vash, steady now ) of australia. Plenty of jobs in those parts too and not many people want them because of the conditions and lack of facilities and the climate :scared: