Personally, I think it’s a good idea… in theory. It’d be very difficult to work out the details in a “fair” way (there’s no point encouraging an Indian civil engineer to move to Australia and then making him and his family live in Bourke, for example) but Australia is a huge place and I think there’s some validity to saying to “general” migrants “OK, you’re welcome to move here- but you’ve got to live in Darwin for two years first.”
And before anyone starts, I’m not Anti-Migrant; I’m a migrant to Australia myself. But Australia is a big place and there is room for everyone here IMHO- just not in the same 5 cities.
With that in mind, what do you think- should the Australian (or any Western Government, for that matter) be able to tell new migrants that a condition of their immigration is living in skills-short rural areas for a set period of time?
Australia has rednecks just like in the US. In the OP’s example of Bourke, the town is 1/3 Aboriginal, so it’s not like everybody there are white [del]Republican[/del] Liberal ranchers.
Definitely true. While there’s no shortage of xenophobia in the cities and suburbs, there’s plenty to go around in some of the more rural areas of the country.
Here’s the thing: Australia has one of the most urbanized populations of any country in the world. Well over 90 percent of the population lives in the large cities and towns, with very few in remote areas.
Also, many of those remote areas have stagnant economies and much higher than average unemployment. It’s all very well wanting to reduce pressure on the population centers and boost the rural areas, but you need a better plan than simply dumping a whole bunch of new immigrants there. Are jobs going to magically appear for these people, when a large percentage of the current population base is already out of work?
I’ve lived in the US for almost 10 years now, so i’m admittedly a bit out of touch with current rural economic conditions in Australia, but i think the government is going to need a fairly well thought-out plan if a proposal like this is going to work. The article linked by the OP claims that “rural and regional employers [are] crying out for workers,” but in my experience the demand for employment in rural and regional Australia is very seasonal and unpredictable. I went to an agricultural boarding school, and grew up with many friends from rural and regional areas, and while it was easy to get a seasonal job working in the cotton fields or the cherry orchards or the vineyards or whatever (depending on the region), finding proper full-time employment was much harder.
And what about letting the vaunted free market do its thing here? If rural and regional Australia are really crying out for people, then one sure way of getting workers is to offer more money. The recent mining and resources boom in Western Australia demonstrates that quite clearly. A good friend of mine’s brother ditched his job as a postal worker and took on a high-paying job in a remote part of Western Australia. It involved being away from his family for weeks or months at a time, but the pay was excellent so he was willing to make the move.
If the government forces new immigrants to work into rural and regional areas, then it effectively gives local employers a captive labor market, and could keep wages artificially low. I’m not too worried that the workers will starve, because Australia has pretty decent minimum wage laws, but it still doesn’t seem like very fair solution. As i said, i admit that i’m not completely up to date on the situation; i’d be interested to know exactly what sort of workers are currently in such high demand in rural and regional Australia, and what sort of wages are being paid for those jobs.
It’s a pretty silly idea actually. There are all sorts of reasons why immigrants are likely to be more productive and comfortable in major cities especially for the first couple of generations and that is the international pattern of immigration around the world. Forcing them to go to smaller, less cosmopolitan places where jobs may not be available doesn’t make much sense. And I doubt that Australian cities have reached some kind of limit, there is usually room to grow and larger cities full of skilled professionals are often more efficient and productive in a number of ways.
If the Australian government wants to encourage population growth in smaller towns they should do this directly by providing subsidies and building infrastructure. This will make these places more attractive to live in for all Australians.
As the article says its already done, and very useful for things like doctor shortages.
I doubt theres a lot of room for expansion and as stated given unemployment issues in rural areas, it might cause more problems than it solves if it was just expanded on principle.
For refugees as opposed to skilled migrants, it would be a disaster. The first years are when support is needed the most and you’d be trying to spread the services across a continent instead of being able to concentrate them in a few major cities.
For New Zealanders, no problem! Make em go to Alice Springs for 5 years or somesuch.
It sounds a bit like the Israeli “Development Town” project from the 1950’s, where immigrants (mostly from North Africa and the Middle East) were given homes in new towns founded in the country’s north and south, away from its heavily-populated center.
The project was a partial success, at best. The towns are still there, but they tend to be poor and culturaly backwards.
You realize that as they were founded in the 1950s (meaning prior to 1967), these towns *have *to be inside Israel proper and not the West Bank or Gaza?
ahem There is no Israel “proper”. It’s a made-up land, like every other place. How about if UK viking descendants were given a hard time of it somewhere and it was decided that a place called Vikingia was goint to be set up in Wales? Do you think the Welsh would have any argument?
Why not use the tax system to provide financial incentives for moving outside metropolitan areas? Give smaller businesses a “rural tax break” or whatever. Immigrants will move where the jobs are. Given that Australia’s immigration system is set up for attracting highly skilled immigrants, whats the point in sending them to the middle of nowhere when there are no jobs there yet?
We’re discussing Australia, so this is not the place for these posts. It’s not like we have a shortage of threads about Israel. Drop this hijack or take these posts to another thread.
Right. That’s something i was going to mention in my earlier post.
Some rural towns have heaps of trouble getting doctors to go there, leading to long drives to find the nearest medical attention when someone falls ill. But the rural doctor program is, i believe, fairly small, and is narrowly targeted at this specific group, which is precisely why it can work. Simply adopting a policy that dumps immigrants in remote areas is going to cause far more trouble that it’s worth, i think.
There are also other ways to provide incentives that don’t have to be (a) the carrot of direct financial subsidies, or (b) the stick of forcing people to live where they wouldn’t otherwise live.
I have friends who are in the teaching profession in New South Wales, and there has always been a problem getting teachers to go to certain rural towns to teach (also to tough city schools). One way the NSW Education Department encouraged teachers to accept assignments in undesirable areas was to have a modified seniority system.
Transfer requests within the system were based on how many points of seniority you had; if two people requested the same position, the one with most points got the transfer. Points were awarded on a graduated scale, something like: 1 point per year for working in most places; 2 points per year for less desirable locations; and 4 points per year for certain remote rural areas and tough city schools where no-one wanted to go.
I knew people who spent three or four years teaching in small rural towns where they never otherwise would have wanted to live, and accumulated so many points in that time that they then basically had their pick of where to go next.
Of course, one problem with a system like this is that it tends to funnel the least experienced teachers into problem schools that really need more experienced teachers, and allows teachers with good seniority to land in an easy school and stay there forever, so it’s not a perfect system. But it did get teachers to schools that needed them. I’m not sure if the system still works the same way.
Never mind economics, aren’t the underpopulated areas of Australia the places where there are the greatest shortages of fresh water and arable land? Is doubling the demand for already scarce water really a good idea?
