CARNARVON local and owner of the town's Port Hotel for the past 20 years, Merome Beard, is acutely aware of the chronic worker shortages impacting the region.
As a direct result of not having enough workers, The Nationals WA candidate for the seat North West Central said her business had to reduce its trade by a staggering 30 hours a week.
"We went from doing breakfast, lunch and dinner at our hotel six days a week to only doing dinner six nights a week and lunch one day a week," Ms Beard said.
"So I am very sympathetic to everyone up here struggling with it, as I'm living it too."
Accompanied by The Nationals Federal leader David Littleproud in Carnarvon last week, the duo spoke with locals about the chronic worker and housing shortages affecting the region, that had been worsened by the damaged caused by ex-Tropical Cyclone Seroja, which hit northern areas of WA in April last year.
Ms Beard invited Mr Littleproud to the region to give locals the opportunity to share their experiences and messages with the party leader, ahead of his attendance at the Jobs and Skills Summit in Canberra early next month.
"We need to be creative and find ways to help fix our worker shortages, otherwise the problem is only going to get worse," Ms Beard said.
Following revelations that the cancellation of maternity services at Carnarvon Hospital in February this year had led to 71 women having to travel outside of the region in order to give birth, Ms Beard said more broadly, there were significant deficits in the provision of health services across the electorate.
"We don't have the obstetrics and the wrap-around services for people to be able to stay in their own towns to give birth, so our regional hospital needs to have that ability," Ms Beard said.
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"Otherwise, if we continue down this path, it will end up being a FIFO hospital and that will be a really terrible outcome for the region."
Having previously worked with outgoing The Nationals WA MP Vince Catania on a petition last year which called for the creation of a special taskforce to review the crime and anti-social behaviours affecting the town, Ms Beard said the high crime rates in WA's North West were a symptom of a lot of underlying issues within their local communities.
"Obviously Carnarvon, Meekatharra and Mount Magnet are towns that have significant crime anti-social behaviour issues," she said.
"Our mental health services also aren't adequate in a lot of these towns.
"So we need change and reform, but we will have to take a holistic approach, as these issues cut across every government department."
The North West Central by-election will be held on Saturday, September 17.
