Rudd Government favours foreign workers in jobs wanted by disadvantaged young Aboriginals
This media release from the one of the most effective organisations working with remote Indigenous young people says it all about the Rudd government's post "sorry" efforts and "closing the gap".
See Interview with Phillip Adams on Late Night Live at this link: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2009/2651483.htm
MEDIA RELEASE
Boys from the Bush Projects
Contact persons
Phillip Duncan - Ph: 0428846003 E-mail:pbjduncan@bigpond.com
Ross Walters - Ph: 04 500 509 44 E-mail: babaross20@bigpond.com.au
The Rudd Government talks a lot about ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’. We need to find jobs for young people, we need to find jobs for Indigenous people, and we need to find jobs for those living in remote communities.
The employment of choice for many young Indigenous people living in remote communities is working in a meat processing plant, and they have proven to be very good workers. The Remote Area Work Scheme (RAWS) was developed specifically to help disadvantaged Indigenous youth living in remote communities, to gain employment in the meat processing industry.
However, the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), favours the importation of foreign workers for these positions instead of young Aboriginal workers. This outcome is achieved by fast tracking the applications of foreign workers.
DEEWR's failure and continued inaction to fund a service specifically designed to help young Aboriginals to gain employment in the meat processing industry, is turning the aspirations of these youth for a better life into offal, whilst foreign workers dine on the choicest cuts of the carcass bearing DEEWR's 'quality assurance' stamp of approval.
The unnecessary protracted delay by DEEWR to provide modest funding for RAWS to recruit and support young Indigenous people into immediate employment in the meat industry has perdured for 16 months. It makes mockery of the Australian Government's clearly defined stance on closing the unemployment gap for Aboriginal people. Its failure, to seize the moment and to assist RAWS to provide sustainable employment to Aboriginal youth in the meat industry, is also contrary to the unions' pact with the Australian Government to provide Australian jobs to Australian workers.
In addition to the fast tracking of foreign worker applications, one of the approval requirements for a foreign worker, is that the applicant (employer) must have exhausted all efforts to employ available Indigenous people. Yet DEEWR makes no check on whether or not the applicants have rejected an offer by RAWS to provide young Indigenous workers.
New regulations now see boners and slicers identified as skilled workers under the 457 visa process. Nearly all the young people placed into abattoirs by RAWS were given the job of boning and slicing. These are tasks that can be mastered by these young people within a few weeks. This is exactly what some meat processors and overseas recruitment companies are doing. They are going to places likeChina and South Korea to run short training courses and then bringing these people into Australia as skilled and unskilled labours.
These same meat processing companies could pay an even smaller proportion of this money by travelling to remote communities in Australia to run short training courses for young Aboriginals.
Many of these meat processing companies would hardly contemplate exacting a wage subsidy from the Chinese government before recruiting its nationals. However, many meat processing companies consider that a wage subsidy is applicable before they consider employing Aboriginals with, or without, their attending a short training course. DEEWR's ‘quality assurance’ stamp of approval appears to hold the definitive imprimatur.
When it comes to young Aboriginals from remote communities working in the meat processing industry, the only employment that DEEWR is effecting is sleight of hand. It generously dissipates the public coffers to aid the employment of foreign nationals to the disadvantage of the home economy and internal skills bank. Indigenous youth, as prospective employees, has been shrouded with the same cloak of invisibility that ‘terra nullius’ blatantly dictated in a preferred to be forgotten past.
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Boys from the Bush Projects
