Qld: Baby boomer tourists could solve skills shortage: Qld govt

AAP General News (Australia)
04-10-2008
Qld: Baby boomer tourists could solve skills shortage: Qld govt

By Jessica Marszalek and Crystal Ja

BRISBANE, April 10 AAP - The tourism industry has welcomed calls from the Queensland
government to lift holiday visa restrictions to allow baby boomers from across the globe
to work in Australia.

Tourism Minister Desley Boyle today said the move would help solve the state's skills
crisis and she had written to federal Immigration Minister Chris Evans seeking his support.

Under current provisions, 12-month holiday visas are available to 18- to 30-year-old workers.

But Ms Boyle said the overseas worker aged 30-plus was Australia's great untapped resource
- especially in Queensland where a low unemployment rate of 3.6 per cent was restricting
business growth.

"Business and industry in Queensland is constrained in terms of its growth by a lack
of skilled labour," she told reporters on the Gold Coast.

"Why should we allow working holiday visas for 18- to 30-year-olds only?

"It may be some of us who are older - baby boomers - may well like that opportunity."

Australian Tourism Export Council (ATEC) managing director Matt Hingerty called the
government's suggestion "good lateral thinking".

"We, obviously, have a well-known labour crisis (and) our key (tourism) markets ...

they're all ageing demographically, so it would make sense for our visa regime to move
with those changes," Mr Hingerty told AAP.

He said the benefits would be twofold - in bringing more tourists to Australia and
addressing the skills crisis in several industries, including the tourism industry.

Mr Hingerty said changing the visa conditions would probably lure travellers Down Under
who would otherwise not come.

"It would give them another option, an option to stay longer, the option to work, which
is what we desperately need, and we would welcome older people with more worldly experience
to help our industry out," he said.

Meanwhile, Ms Boyle said she would wait for responses to the proposal from the business
industry before taking the matter further and discussing it with other states and territories.

AAP jmm/pjo/ldj/cdh

KEYWORD: TOURISM BOOMERS NIGHTLEAD

2008 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.