workforce
No time to lose
The race is on to secure overseas aged care workers .
Louise O ’ Neill interviewed by Elise Hartevelt
Australia needs to up its game in attracting overseas aged care workers to plug staffing gaps before competition with countries like New Zealand and Canada becomes more fierce , experts say .
Chief executive of the Aged Care Workforce Industry Council , Louise O ’ Neill , says it ’ s a contest our country doesn ’ t have the luxury to lose out on .
“ It ’ s a natural progression from the lack of migratory movement during COVID ,” she says .
“ Now that all borders are opening up again , we don ’ t want to miss the boat .
“ We need to be jumping onto this and get people in as soon as we can otherwise we ’ ll be potentially left out .”
26 agedcareinsite . com . au
Louise joined Aged Care Insite in a conversation about how Australia can win the race to import aged workers to address workforce shortages .
ACI : Could you explain to us what the current situation is like regarding immigrating workers coming to Australia ? LN : The council would really welcome any change that sees a broadening of that pipeline of the workforce . It ’ s definitely not the whole solution to fixing the workforce issues , just a small part of it , but it ’ s one we need to progress and we ’ ve had conversations across the sector with departments exploring migration solutions over the past year .
We did a lot of work on a labour agreement for the industry and worked with some providers who were developing a regional labour agreement . We worked with Department of Health and Department of Home Affairs and some other groups of providers on what an industry labour agreement should look like , and the concessions government would need to take to bring that more in line with wages and conditions for workers in this country .
One of the big issues around industry labour agreements is that the minimum wage employers are required to pay is higher than the minimum wage of aged care workers domestically . So you absolutely do not want to be exploiting your domestic workforce , and you need to make sure that this approach is consistent and you are treating them in the same way as your domestic population .
There ’ s people in a lot of countries that are looking at coming to Australia at the moment . We know that people in the Philippines would like to , in India and a lot of other Asian countries like Vietnam we ’ re hearing also .
We understand there is work happening in government and that ’ s really music to our ears . We really want to see that happen .