Employment

Forestry Corporation of NSW has welcomed five international recruits to its 2022 Bathurst seasonal program, with firefighters coming from Canada and New Zealand to join local recruits and support the organisation leading into bushfire season. Canada is particularly well represented, with four recruits making the 17 hour flight to Australia to join the team this year.  

The NSW sugar industry is putting out a call for truck drivers, in a race to finalise the harvest and crushing of this years’ northern rivers sugarcane crop. Thousands of tonnes of sugarcane remain unharvested due to a shortage of truck drivers.

The National Farmers’ Federation’s (NFF) Horticulture Council is calling on the Federal Government to ensure its much-heralded solution to the growing workforce crisis works for the whole of the sector. Following Covid-19 disruptions, there was a swift shift towards a greater reliance on the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme, but with that came headaches for smaller employers who previously relied mostly on backpackers.

Katter’s Australian Party is flagging a proposal incentivising Year 12 students to take up the forgotten “wet” trades of bricklaying, concreting and scaffolding in a transitional schedule strategically-timed with the winter weather. In response to predictions that North Queensland would face an alarming lack of willing workers in the “wet” trades of bricklaying, concreting and scaffolding in the next decade, the KAP proposed to incentivise and provide employment pathways for an annually-set number of Year 12 students.

Peak industry body for Queensland horticulture, Growcom is calling on the federal government to engage in genuine and meaningful discussion after the passing of the new Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022 so industry can understand how it will be implemented. Growcom CEO Rachel Chambers said when discussing a Bill called ‘secure jobs, better pay’ you need to have the business owners, the people who create the jobs for employees, around the table. Without employers there is no employment.

Prominent local lawyer Jason Goode, of local law firm Farrell Goode, has been named a finalist in the NSW Law Society’s prestigious Rural Practitioner of the Year award in recognition of his tireless support of this region. Mr Goode, who is joint president of the Riverina Law Society and a member of the society’s rural issues committee, has spent the past 30 years working to bring much-needed attention to the issues that are unique to this area.

The National Farmers’ Federation has acknowledged the concessions granted which will see the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill pass the Parliament this week, but warns that the consequences for the food supply chain remain largely unknown. NFF President Fiona Simson said it was disappointing to see a government so disinterested in the genuinely held concerns of employers.

Lockhart River mayor Wayne Butcher has praised his council’s team after it successfully built and sealed a new road using a local workforce. “For the first time in history, Lockhart River Aboriginal Shire Council has built a road from scratch to bitumen,” he said.

When Daniel Andrews announced his plans to revive the State Electricity Commission (SEC), he said: “Unreliable, privatised coal will be replaced by clean, government-owned renewable energy.” This is a distorted claim.

Four new registered nurses have joined the Torres and Cape Hospital and Health Service as part of a Queensland-first program to attract people from the city to the country. The nurses are part of the Rural Generalist Registered Nurse Program workforce initiative.

A record number of Australian Catholic University pre-service teachers have headed into regional, rural, and remote areas nationally to complete their teaching placements this year. More than 250 teaching students will have travelled far and wide to learn on the job by the end of 2022 ... “We are hoping they will love it so much they will want to return to these regions as teachers on graduation.”

Rex announced its regional pilots have overwhelmingly endorsed a new industrial agreement with the airline, the third key workforce group to have done so in the last two months. A staggering 86% of the pilots, who operate Rex’s fleet of 61 Saab 340 turboprop aircraft to 58 regional destinations Australia-wide, voted in favour of the new four-year agreement.

Federal Minister for Skills and Training Brendan O’Connor visited Tennant Creek last week to meet local employers, service providers and learners at a jobs and skills forum. The forum was hosted by Member for Lingiari Marion Scrymgour and Charles Darwin University.

Casino’s largest business has plenty to celebrate. The Casino Food Co-op is the winner of the Northern Rivers 2022 Regional Business of the Year ... The win for the Co-op wasn’t only about the meat industry. Earlier this month, the Co‐op launched a Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan.

As Queensland celebrates World Teacher’s Day ... the University of Southern Queensland is demonstrating its commitment to shaping the next generation of leaders in rural and remote classrooms. In 2021 92 per cent of USQ graduates in the School of Education Alternative Context Project chose to start their career in classrooms outside of metropolitan areas ... Taylah Hoffman travelled to Quilpie for one of several placements ...

"World Teachers’ Day seems an opportune time to reflect on both the challenges facing the profession and the myriad reasons it is great to be a teacher ... People are still drawn to teaching for a fulfilling and rewarding career that really makes a difference. More career-changers than ever are pivoting to teacher education to prepare for careers as teachers": CSU's Associate Professor Will Letts.

Kristin Murdock. A new approach to managing shearing teams is paying dividends in the Mid North of the state and helping address the skills shortage which is being felt by the entire livestock industry. When Sarah-Jane Abley’s shearing team steps onto the boards of shearing sheds around South Australia, out goes any hierarchy and instead the team just gets to work.

For the second time in 10 days, prison officers from the Clarence Correctional Centre (CCC) stopped work amidst ongoing frustrations surrounding multinational Serco’s current refusal to improve what have been described as unsafe working conditions or increase employee pay rates ... The latest event followed a rally at the Truck Drivers Memorial Park in South Grafton on September 30, which was attended by more than 80 CCC prison officers, who loudly voiced their concerns.  

After 14 work related deaths in the WA agricultural industry over last 18 months, far more than any other state, serious questions need to be asked about why our Ministers have put all their faith in the impact of draconian new industrial manslaughter laws when it's clearly not working.

The Victorian Farmers Federation’s United Dairy Farmers of Victoria (VFF UDV) says Northern Victoria’s dairy industry would be further damaged by water buybacks and the recovery of the 450GL up-water target ahead of this week’s meeting of State and Federal Water Ministers to discuss the Murray Darling Basin Plan. VFF UDV President Mark Billing said the group strongly opposed the recovery of the 450GL saying it would lead to losses in dairy production and local jobs.

Western Australia's resources sector continues to drive the State and national economies, with record sales of $231 billion and the highest-ever employment figures in 2021-22. This is the fourth financial year in a row the sector has delivered record sales, following $151 billion in 2018-19, $172 billion in 2019-20 and $211 billion in 2020-21.