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Engineers needed in Australia
With the Aussie government announcing a global shortage of engineers in Australia, Patricia Curmi asks what can Brits who qualify expect from their new careers Down Under
Australian companies are taking advantage of new local regulations to target British and Irish engineers in an attempt to bolster the country's flagging numbers of qualified specialists. One body, Engineers Australia, has recruited 36 Irish engineers in the past 12 months, and is coming back for more.
In September the Australian government added electrical and mechanical engineers to its Migration Occupations in Demand List (MODL), making it easier for migrants with those qualifications to gain working visas. Peter Taylor, chief executive of The Institution of Engineers Australia, says filling the gap might be tough: "There is a worldwide shortage of engineers," he says.
Meanwhile, Western Australia's resources and infrastructure boom has driven a near 50 per cent increase in the number of engineering jobs in the state in the past two years. All this and there have been discussions in the upper echelons of Australia's political and corporate elite about the viability of nuclear power arriving in Australia. Australia has 40 per cent of the world's most accessible uranium and with a push from Prime Minister John Howard to value-add to the country's uranium exports Australia may develop enrichment facilities or power plants in the future.
But there is a key issue to be confronted if, as expected, Australia pushes nuclear activity: skilled workers. There is a gaping chasm in Australia's nuclear skills base and the key workers that Australia will need to produce or import to build a nuclear industry, including health and safety experts, radiation physicists, mining engineers and geologists.
The estimated size of the nuclear work force in Britain is 50,000, including about 20,000 involved in the production and reprocessing of nuclear fuel and waste handling.
The Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering has advised that if "Australia were to set up a reprocessing plant similar in size to that at La Hague (in France), it is estimated that approximately 1,500 positions for engineers and managers as well as another 2,400 technicians" would be needed.
So it's pretty obvious that a lack of investment in its skills base has left Australia with depleted numbers of engineers and the government is desperate for overseas engineers.
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