Marcia A 2 Way Street

“Thanks to Cyclone Marcia we’ve got enough work for the next 12 months”. There are a reasonable number of businesses saying something similar to this at the moment. Hopefully majority of these are locally owned businesses. Good for these businesses, not so good if you’re waiting for up to 12 months to get a job done. You expect that this means new jobs are being created to help meet the demand for work. A search of job site SEEK didn’t reveal many vacancies for the jobs you might assume to see involved in the cyclone repair and recovery work. Add key word ‘apprentice’ to the search and only one correctly categorised position appeared. ONE. Businesses may respond with ‘I’m not putting on an apprentice for 4 years just because I’ve got 12 months of work’.  Local media are pushing support local businesses to maximise the long term benefits of the recovery funds being expended. “Insist that you’re insurance company uses local businesses”, is one call. If your insurance company responds that you might be waiting 12 months for your claim to be fixed, will you still insist on locals? The call to maximise the long term benefit from the recovery funds is a 2 way street, households supporting local businesses and local businesses promptly (within reason) responding to the households demands. Recovery funds generate paid work; creating new local jobs to manage this extra work is part of maximising the long term benefit to the community. Don’t and it is much easier for out-of-towner’s to get the work and money. No doubt there are local businesses putting on more employees, vacancies don’t necessarily need to be advertised. More job creation needs to be encouraged though. Can we cut the red tape to put on youth who have done their 1st year plumbers apprenticeship but were put off due to a business closure to work for another plumber while they’re flat out? Can we allocate repairs to some public property for unemployed youth training? Can local media extend the buy local call with recognition of the local businesses that are recruiting locals to meet the demand? Let’s create more local jobs, not 12 month waiting lists of customers seeking quicker alternatives.