Committee Secretary Joint Standing Committee on Migration- Inquiry into migration in regional Via email: [email protected]

Hospitality NT is a branch of the Australian Hotels Association but includes a broader base of hospitality businesses that are Members, than what is seen in most other AHA Branches.

Hospitality NT’s members comprised of licensed cafes, restaurants, wayside inns, licensed clubs, community clubs, nightclubs, accommodation hotels, casinos and pubs. Our Members are located all throughout the NT, including in many remote areas.

Hospitality NT welcomes the opportunity to provide a short submission on this Inquiry and hope to provide more detailed information at a Committee Hearing in Darwin or , which we encourage the Committee to consider.

1. Our Industry – Overview

Our Association estimates that 17,000 people are employed in the hospitality industry in the , through approximately 600 businesses. While not large in comparison to other states, hospitality and tourism industries employ 1 in 8 Territorians – so is a significant industry and employer for the NT’s economy.

We undertake a census of our industry each year. Our latest results (December 2018) shows 753 of unfilled skilled positions from the sample of employers (approximately 15% of total industry) that completed the census, if extrapolated out this figure would be significantly higher.

Recently the NT Government released its 2030 Tourism Strategy which outlined a shortfall of 3,900 jobs in the sector, should the industry grow as forecasted.

Hospitality NT supports locals working in our industry and continuing to promote the work, career and lifestyle opportunities to all Australians. We are currently undertaking our own dedicated worker attraction program, and in over many years, have participated in the NT Government’s worker attraction activities in numerous cities throughout Australia.

We also note the NT Government’s ‘Boundless Possible’ campaign and associated ‘Welcome to the Territory Incentive Program, which is spending millions of dollars annually on increasing the NT’s declining population, through targeting certain demographics and providing them with monetary incentives to move to the NT for certain occupations.

Hospitality NT also works on a local workforce project, engaging with local Registered Training Organisations, VET and VET in Schools, school career councillors and other stakeholders on promoting hospitality as a training, job and career pathway. Considering the breadth of training and job opportunities presented to locals, particularly school students, we do believe hospitality gets our fair share of students interested in our pathway.

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However, in the context of total number of students and Territorians, training in hospitality then moving into employment within our sector, there are not huge numbers, or numbers anywhere close to the shortages we know exists in our industry.

For example, the largest training provider in VET in commercial cookery is Charles Darwin University. Each year approximately 10 chefs graduate from a Certificate IV in Commercial Cookery and move into employment, where our Member census identifies 10 times that of qualified and experienced chefs needed in the Darwin and Palmerston area.

We note that in the more remote towns of Katherine, and Nhulunbuy that workforce participation in our industry is impeded by the availability of appropriate training. This is most evident in the VET in Schools program where despite the demand locally for hospitality workers and hospitality skills in other industries (hospital, aged care, boarding schools, mining catering, child care, tourism operations and retail) there is insufficient critical mass to fund private training organisations to support local training. Ironically, there is far more funding for employment service programs to increase workforce participation. Unfortunately, the funding preference for employment services discriminates against students and school leavers participating in the workforce. Surely it should be a priority for students attending schools to be given the opportunity for a job outcome ahead of those former students struggling to enter the workforce. We would argue that if more was done at the VET in School stage then less clients would need the services of the employment services system’.

With local labour forces unable to meet demand we rely heavily on attracting Australians to work in the NT. Again, in the past we get our fair share of Australians willing to move away from their home states but this additional supply of labour falls short of the needs. The labour trend is for residents to seek employment in the larger cities of Australia. Accordingly, we compete with all the major cities of Australia in recruiting staff to our relatively smaller and remote towns.

The tourism product is diverse and spread around the NT (e.g. Kakadu, Yulara, Katherine, Darwin, Nhulunbuy, Tiwi Islands, Tennant Creek, Groote Eylandt) and the labour force required is disproportionate to our population base. Workforce participation rates at present indicate that there are a large number of Territorians who are not suitable to be participating in the hospitality workforce, due to remote geographic location, skill or cultural reasons. With regard to aboriginal workforce participation we estimate our current aboriginal workforce to be 5% of our hospitality workforce. This proportion is increasing gradually, and we would hope that this figure would double by 2030. Notwithstanding this gradual increase the NT will still need to source labour from overseas to top up its labour shortage.

2. Australian Hotels Association & Tourism Accommodation Australia Submission

Hospitality NT supports the submission provided to this Committee by our national office AHA and national accommodation division, TAA.

However, we do have several points of difference to our National position, which are detailed below.

Skilling Australia Fund AHA/TAA position: to halve the current amount to $600 for small businesses and $900 for larger business.

Hospitality NT supports the abolishment of the Skilling Australia Levy to Northern Territory businesses seeking to apply for overseas workers to fill identified and proven vacancy. We know that the high upfront cost of the Skilling Australia Levy is currently preventing employers from accessing overseas skilled labour.

The Northern Territory economy is currently experiencing a downturn, and businesses are needing to tighten their spending and business expenses, whilst at the same time, seeking to improve their bottom line, through delivering high quality goods and services and increased customers. 2

As stated above, the local pipeline of hospitality staff is very small in comparison with the high demand for skilled workers in our industry, and the number of interstate migration is extremely low – if not decreasing, with more people leaving the NT then coming here for work. However, the current Skilling Australia Levy is prohibiting NT employers from looking to fill their job vacancies with overseas workers, due to the cost.

WHM AHA/TAA position: Hospitality/Tourism to be added as an approved industry to enable WHMs to complete their specified work in resorts, hotels and pubs.

Hospitality NT only partially supports this position.

The Northern Territory’s hospitality industry does allow 462 WHM visa holders to be eligible to work in our industry in order to apply for 2nd and 3rd year visas. Hospitality NT would like to see the same rights provided to 417 WHM visa holders as to those that apply to 462s, in order to increase the number of Working Holiday Makers living and working in the NT.

In order to disperse Working Holiday Makers to the north of Australia, we would not support the broadening or expanding definition of ‘regional Australia.’

3. Designated Area Migration Agreement The NT Government was the first jurisdiction to negotiate a Designated Area Migration Agreement with the Department of Home Affairs. A lot of work went into this process, which still continues today, in providing evidence of the occupations in demand and the current local pipeline of staff not being sufficient in numbers to fill this gap.

Furthermore, through the DAMA, the NT Government must show attempts to promote the jobs in demand to other Australians, and have in the past run advertising campaigns, as well as ‘Worker Attraction’ Expos and Seminars.

The ‘Boundless Possible’ initiative, is in fact, spending millions of dollars annually to entice and recruit Australians to make the move to the NT for work and lifestyle reasons.

We are thankful that the NT’s DAMA retained the ability for skilled migrants to enter a pathway to permanent residency, which we saw removed from other more general skilled visas.

The media attention around this, has shown that some migrants are keen to make the move the NT, with feedback from our Members of an increase in the number of applications from skilled overseas workers, many currently working in other locations in Australia. This seems to perfectly aligned with the Federal Government’s aim to reduce the number of overseas workers from Sydney and Melbourne to more regional areas, such as the NT.

However, again the issue of the high cost of the Skilling Australia Fund, as well as the red tape involved in the DAMA processes and long processing time, the uncertainty in applications, where one small error can result in an objection, all have resulted in a relatively low uptake of workers under the DAMA.

4. Labour Market Testing As detailed above, the work that continues to go into both the NT DAMA and ‘Boundless Possible’ Population Plan, provides significant evidence on occupations in demand and the need to increase our population.

The current Labour Market Testing requirements involves positions being advertised for a period at least 28 days on at least 2 acceptable platforms. Our Association is aware of multiple DAMA applications and applications for other visas being knocked back due to non-compliance with the Labour Market Testing requirements.

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Our Association believes that the Labour Market Testing requirements are not required in the NT environment, and only adds additional and unnecessary delays and costs given that program’s such as DAMA utilises an occupation list which is based on labour shortage data and industry information.

Hospitality NT seeks that the labour market testing requirement not apply to the NT DAMA II program. It should be noted that occupations on the DAMA II list are identified through robust labour market analysis, are genuine in shortage occupations and that those occupations are negotiated with the Department of Home Affairs for approval annually.

5. Zone Tax Offset Hospitality NT strongly believes that the Zone Tax Offset should be retained and increased significantly.

There have been media reports indicating that the Federal Government are looking to scrap the Zone Tax Offset. Our calculations show that would wipe out $51 million from the NT economy, at a time when we can least afford.

The Committee should consider more taxation incentives that facilitate Australians to relocate to regions like the Northern Territory, and not the other way around.

There is no doubt that the cost of living in the Northern Territory is higher than other locations around Australia, particularly for airlines.

For any more information, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Des Crowe Chief Executive Officer Hospitality NT

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