Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The holidays are coming, so's summer, and people would normally be flocking to the Illawarra and Southern Highlands—and we want them to. But we need workers. We desperately need workers in the hotel and hospitality industry, which is why I've been organising with our local RDA Illawarra and jobs coordinator a jobs drive, which opens today and culminates in an event on 7 December at Osborne Park. The message to locals, whether you're a school leaver or a university student just about to finish is: come in, sign up, local employers want to give you a job. Whether it's a job in the kitchen or a job behind the bar, whether it's working in the rooms or working on the tables, we need you. We don't want to see half the tables being unavailable for service because we don't have the staff. We don't want to see half the rooms being unavailable for people to stay in because we don't have the staff. I welcome the fact that immigration is going to open up again. But it won't come soon enough to help with the many hospitality job shortages that we have. We want to work with industry and work with employers to ensure that we can match locals up with jobs, and we need to ensure that we're never in this situation again. That requires working with the local TAFE and working with local employers to ensure that we have a pipeline of skilled staff who are able to work in our hospitality industry—good for jobs, good for the industry.