Life in limbo over, ex-MP Brian Greig hits paydirt

Experience may be the best educator but it failed to matter during Brian Greig’s recent lengthy search for work.

Ex-MP Brian Greig in Busselton in Western Australia. Picture: Sarah Hewer

Experience may be the best educator but it failed to matter during Brian Greig’s recent lengthy search for work.

“I’ve had the extraordinary experience of being thrown into the Senate at 33 with the balance of power at day one. Once you’ve been there you feel like you can do anything,” says the former Australian Democrats parliamentarian who spent six years in Canberra from the late 1990s, and was briefly the federal leader.

Operating at some of the highest levels of national service, Greig’s parliamentary involvement spanned from committee work on intelligence groups to advocating for LGBTI rights. Yet in his post-political life that experience worked against him. “It turns people. It’s a negative,” he says of his years of parliamentary toil. “I’m on the wrong side of 50 and being an ex-parliamentarian is a curse. If you apply for fairly ordinary jobs people look at your CV and they don’t articulate it but what they are thinking is ‘he wouldn’t be happy here’.”

So when in 2018 Greig was made redundant from his most recent role in media and public relations, the options he faced were greatly constrained. With no work in Perth, he and his partner, who had also been made redundant, sold their home and in 2019 relocated to Busselton, at the entrance to the popular Margaret River region. With no income, they moved into an investment property.

Over 18 months, Greig applied for more than 100 jobs, mostly in hospitality, one of the region’s main employers. He received just three interviews and not a single job offer. He even applied to be an office junior at a local law firm but, although the position was advertised as being suitable for someone looking to re-enter the workforce, he heard nothing back.

Then in late September, as the economy began to settle from the initial shudders of Covid, he found himself at the centre of a phenomenon that has been sweeping the country.

As more people started travelling and eating out, employers began restaffing positions that had been emptied when the nation shut down last March. But with hundreds of thousands of overseas workers having left Australia at the start of the pandemic, many of these jobs could no longer be filled.

With the nation’s borders still closed, continued labour scarcities are being felt throughout the tourism and hospitality industries. “Pretty much every hotel in the country would have some level of closure due to staff shortages,” Dean Long, CEO of the Accommodation Association, tells The Weekend Australian Magazine on Saturday.

Demand for workers in regional Australia, in particular, is at an all-time peak. More than 66,000 jobs are waiting to be filled, even more than during the mining boom a decade ago – an unexpected outcome for rejected workers such as Brian Greig, who have suddenly become coveted commodities.

Having endured 18 months of silence from other potential employers, he received an immediate reply when he emailed a local microbrewery in late September. Although he had never worked in hospitality, and could not carry multiple drinks or dishes at a time, he was hired – without even having to show his CV.

“Things suddenly changed when (places) were desperate,” says Greig, who since October has been working as a casual five days a week, pouring beers and taking food orders.

Eight months on, he’s still rejoicing at the memory of receiving his first pay cheque in his re-imagined life. “It was such a joy,” he says. “It was the first money which had gone into my account in two years.”