Employment Minister of Australia Chris Evans announced that mining giants would be able to import labour to work in their mines.
With 75 huge projects about to take off the mining giants are in serious need of overseas workers even after having fast tracked apprenticeships for local miners.
The Australian government is allowing them this privilege so that they can prepare Australian workers for these jobs in the future.
The announcement came in response to the National Resources Sector Employment Taskforce report that had given the government 31 recommendations. All of these have been accepted as per the minister. The organization will be spending $200 million on a Critical Skills Investment Fund that will allow local companies to gain grants which will cover between 50 to 90 % of the cost of training to resource employers.
The fund seeks to boost the skill levels of some under- represented groups in the mining industry such as women, the mature aged, the indigenous Australian and the untrained youth. As per the Minerals Council of Australia the Critical Skills Investment Fund will train about 39,000 people in the next four years. Still there will be shortfall of workers at the mining sector will need about 77,500 workers.
That is why the Minerals Council of Australia was happy that the government had allowed skilled migrants to be brought in to meet the shortfall. The agreements said that the government would assist companies to get in workers under the 457 skilled visa when local workers were not readily available to take on the jobs.