The Wire

Labour industries have today announced that there is a big skilled worker shortage in Australia, particularly in regional centres. So, with the trade skills training visa in place, more and more companies are importing foreign labour from overseas. Secretary of the ACTU, Greg Combet thinks that companies are using the visas to exploit foreign workers and that the Government should inject more money into the Australian apprenticeship scheme to encourage more workers from home. Darren Thomas is the Director of T & R Pastoral, a company who has taken on 81 new migrant workers, and he says that everything is done by the books and there still is a strong national feeling towards employing locals.