THE Federal National Party leader wants to make sure Western Australia's voice is heard at the Jobs and Skills Summit, being held in Canberra today, Thursday, September 1 and Friday, September 2.
David Littleproud spent last week in WA, touring the Gascoyne region and offering support for The Nationals WA candidate for North West Central by-election, Merome Beard.
He also spoke with local community leaders in WA, and including at the Dowerin GWN7 Machinery Field Days, about the skilled and unskilled labour and housing shortages.
Mr Littleproud said he would use the summit as a platform to shine a light on WA's regional workforce shortages, with the State's own challenges around the issue "acute and unique".
"Industry has told us that from 'the farmgate to your plate', we are about 172,000 workers short," Mr Littleproud said.
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"The Pacific Islander scheme that the government is allowing us to utilise would give us 50,000 people at best which we are sharing with other parts of the economy, so the sheer arithmetic of it doesn't add up.
"It's time that the unions and government came out and listened to farmers and understood the gravity of the problem."
Mr Littleproud said while he thought the agricultural visa needed to be reinstated, it wasn't just the agricultural industry that was suffering from workforce woes, and that a broader skilled regional visa was needed for Australia, in order to allow for greater flexibility for people to work in industries where particular skill sets were required.
"For both the ag and regional skilled visas, we need to also provide those people with a pathway to permanent residence if they work and live in Australia for four to six years, because we have found that if they stay for that amount of time, those people are more likely to invest in the community they've moved into and not be transient."
Mr Littleproud said his party was supportive of pensioners and veterans being given the ability to work more hours without it affecting their welfare payments.
The provision of more regional university centres and higher education training facilities in the regions has been suggested as a part solution to Australia's regional and remote communities retaining workers.
"A program in which doctors and practitioner nurse graduate HECS fees are paid for them if they come and do five plus years in a regional or remote area - I think that idea should be spread to pharmacists and other professions where there are worker shortages in rural and regional Australia," Mr Littleproud said.
"These are some examples of the practical ideas I've heard that I want to take back to Canberra and I am hoping will help shift the dial."
As a result of the Federal government expanding a program in which foreign doctors are able to come and work in Australia from regional and remote areas to include Australia's capital cities, Mr Littleproud said it was absurd that towns like Carnarvon were now competing with the likes of Perth for medical practitioners.
