Samoa's Prime Minister has warned her country may need to pull back from a key regional program that sends pacific workers to Australia. The labour mobility scheme has been considered a success. But now some pacific nations worry it could be worsening their own skills shortages.
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00:00 People are going by the plane loads.
00:04 Many have flown to Australia.
00:06 More than 35,000 Pacific Islanders now work here on labour mobility schemes.
00:11 And Sangeeta says that exodus is hurting her.
00:15 Early this year I had no staff at all in the front of house to be able to serve.
00:21 I mean there were people around but they didn't understand the wine, they didn't understand
00:25 the food.
00:26 That same frustration's growing in a handful of other Pacific Island countries who pounced
00:31 on the chance to send workers but are now wondering if they might need to pull back.
00:37 It could be seen that somehow we're just these outposts where we grow people as though that's
00:43 our lot in life.
00:44 I really don't like that.
00:46 Hotels are also feeling the pinch and tourism chiefs are starting to press for numbers to
00:51 be capped.
00:52 Just to try and limit the amount and I think probably the caps idea is probably the best
00:57 one so far.
00:58 While Australian farmers who now depend on Pacific workers are conscious of the problem
01:03 and say the government needs to look to South East Asia as well.
01:07 This is why we advocated for the ag visa to open up to the other ASEAN countries within
01:12 our region to give us a bigger pool of workers.
01:16 Australia still regards the scheme as a great success and it's not hard to see why Pacific
01:21 workers are able to fill workforce shortages here while sending valuable remittances back
01:26 home.
01:27 And none of the Pacific nations raising these concerns are likely to get out of the program
01:32 entirely.
01:33 But as it expands some growing pains are inevitable.
01:37 [BLANK_AUDIO]