AUSTRALIA:THE NUMBER of Irish people who have received working holiday visas for Australia has gone up by nearly 50 per cent in the last year.
According to the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship, the number of visas granted in the year ending June 30th increased from 14,832 to 21,784.
Working holiday visas are available to young people between 18 and 30. They allow successful applicants to work up to six months during the year’s visa and to stay another year if they work in designated industries, like construction and fruit picking, and in certain regional areas outside the major cities.
Rodney Harrex, Tourism Australia’s general manager for the UK and northern Europe, described the rise in applications from Ireland as “staggering”. He said Australia continued to present itself as a “unique opportunity” for those who want to get away from the recession.
Australia’s commodity boom and tightly regulated financial sector has helped it to be one of the few developed countries to avoid recession during the global economic crisis.
“We are appealing to those who are out of work, in between education, on a career break or who just want to experience the lifestyle to go,” said Harrex.
Parts of Australia are continuing to experience a boom, particularly commodity-rich Western Australia. Its state government minister for training and workforce development Peter Collier was in Ireland last month seeking to recruit workers because of skills shortages in the region which is as big as western Europe and which has a chronic infrastructure deficit.
Meanwhile, the number of Irish people going on holidays to Australia has fallen significantly according to new figures released this week by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. These show that under 60,000 Irish people travelled down under for their holidays over the last 12 months – 6,000 less than the same period last year.
Australian authorities pointed to the fragile economic situation in Ireland as the reason for the decline and that a strong Australian dollar did not help the situation. Tourist numbers from Ireland were down 10 per cent while the normally strong UK market also fell by 3 per cent while visitors from the US dropped 5 per cent.
The situation is reversed going the other way, however, and thanks to a strong economy the number of Australian tourists travelling overseas has reached record highs and the statistics offered recorded a 10 per cent jump in Australians heading overseas in the 2010-11 financial year compared to the year before. In June alone, there were 656,700 short-term departures from Australia, compared to 595,700 in June last year and 508,200 in June 2009.
The chief executive of the Australian Tourism and Transport Forum, John Lee, warned that the boom could come back to haunt the Australian economy. “The flipside is that our domestic market is suffering,” he said. “People are leaving with empty bags and returning with bulging suitcases . . . this is reflected in slowing retail trade figures, as more Australians look for better value elsewhere.”