‘We need more people’: Expert says migrants needed amid Olympic-sized workforce squeeze
Queensland’s construction workforce shortage will be its biggest challenge as it stares down the clock until the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, according to an urban planning expert.
With just six years to go, the state is on a razor-thin deadline.
Early works have begun at the site of Brisbane Stadium but it’s a long way off looking like this artist’s impression. Queensland government
Of the seven new venues, only one, Brisbane Stadium at Victoria Park, has begun early works.
The remaining new builds and further 10 venue upgrades are still in the planning and approvals or design phases.
Meanwhile, Construction Skills Queensland forecasts the industry will be short 19,100 workers on average over the next eight years, peaking at a 35,000 deficit next financial year.
“We need more people,” Dr Sebastien Darchen from the University of Queensland’s School of Architecture, Design and Planning told nine.com.au.
“There’s going to be more stress on the building workforce.
“That’s a fact, you can’t deny that.
“How can you provide more people in a few years?
“If the workforce is not in Australia, then we’ll need to attract it from some other place.”
Darchen said even temporary migration of skilled overseas workers in key trades could help address the shortage.
But he said Australia’s strict immigration policy limited an influx of construction trades, unlike in Europe, where there is more fluid cross-border movement of labour.
He acknowledged Australia’s migration debate was being influenced by anti-migration sentiment from Europe, where political and social discourse is boiling over the disputed impacts of large waves of immigration on crime, public safety and social stability.
“There’s always the thing about trust, can you trust those people from overseas because Australia sees the example from Europe and so it’s a very complex issue, a very complex issue that goes beyond urban planning,” he said.
Dr Sebastien Darchen University of Queensland
The federal government has forecast net overseas migration returning to about 225,000 annually by 2028 from 306,000 last year and its post-COVID peak of 556,000.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, a Queenslander herself, has centred three decades of political life on anti-migration rhetoric.
But the party’s policy to cap net overseas migration at 130,000 visas is up in the air, after MP David Farley admitted the party’s cap would actually be closer to 230,000 after accounting for 100,000 skilled workers under existing visa schemes.
An independent report by the Queensland Productivity Commission last year found that Queensland could be better leveraging its slice of the nation’s skilled migrant workforce.
The report found only around 100 construction trade workers migrate to Queensland each year under state-nominated skilled worker visa pathways.
It found skilled overseas workers were underrepresented in the construction workforce and many were underemployed.
In response, the Queensland government said it had “strongly and consistently advocated for an increased allocation of skilled overseas migration places” and said it would streamline the licensing process for migrants.
The Queensland government has insisted the venues will be delivered on budget and on time.
The construction effort at Victoria Park only began in June, but it’s still ahead of the other Brisbane 2032 projects. Cameron Atfield
Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie last year said he was prepared to “beg, borrow and steal workers from everywhere” to make it happen.
Darchen agrees Queensland will meet its deadline but said constraints on the construction workforce would endure well beyond 2032.
“It’s quite a tight deadline, but I believe they’re going to make it,” he said.
“Every Olympics faces the same thing.
“This was the same with the Paris Olympics, people said, ‘oh, it’s not going to happen’, and then they always find a way to make it happen.
“But the growth of Brisbane is not going to stop now.
“Brisbane’s going to reach 5 million people by 2032.
“It’s going to be a huge metropolitan area and there’s going to be more construction.
“We’ll need more workforce in the building industry, even beyond the Olympics.”
Construction Skills Queensland declined an interview.
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