Hospitality bid for special foreign staff visas

The hospitality sector is demanding the Morrison government introduce a 12-month ‘COVID recovery worker visa’ to plug critical staff shortages.

The hospitality and accommodation industries have nominated labour shortages as the biggest barrier to their revival. Picture: iStock

The hospitality sector is demanding the Morrison government introduce a 12-month “COVID recovery worker visa” as critical staff shortages of up to 30 per cent force businesses to reduce opening hours or close altogether.

The push for a special visa, which would be paid for by the recipient, comes as the ­Accomm­odation Association reveals its hotel and resort operators lost $5bn in room revenue across Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart, Canberra and the Gold Coast in the year to ­February. Melbourne hotels suffered the biggest hit, with a $1.4bn loss in room revenue.

Analysis conducted for the peak body by AHS Advisory also shows that recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic for the tourism accommodation sector will take at least four years.

The hospitality and accommodation industries have nominated labour shortages as the biggest barrier to their revival, after the coronavirus sparked a mass exodus of 200,000 foreign students, backpackers and skilled visa holders. The hospitality sector has lost 100,000 jobs and there has been a 23 per cent decline in full-time ­accommodation positions.

Restaurant and Catering chief executive Wes Lambert has written to Immigration Minister Alex Hawke saying migration was key to fixing the staff shortage. He called for the working holidaymaker visa to be temporarily replaced by a COVID recovery visa.

“This visa would allow workers who agreed to work in sectors of our economy suffering from critical shortages for a short period of time, provided they pay for visas, travel, a short quarantine stay, initial testing and — most importantly — were already vaccinated prior to coming to Australia,” Mr Lambert writes in The Australian.

“Opening this vital pipeline would help plug these labour gaps and keep businesses open in Australia, as well as signalling to the world Australia is not just a haven from COVID-19 but a haven for those, like generations before, looking for new ­opportunities after a period of ­disaster.”

Under Restaurant and Catering’s plan, visa-holders would be able to work in a single business for a maximum of 12 months and could be aged up to 35 years old.

Accommodation Association chief executive Dean Long said it was essential chefs were added to the Morrison government’s priority migration skilled occupation list, designed to fill workforce gaps to support the COVID-19 economic recovery.

He also wanted the cap on 40-hour fortnightly working weeks lifted for international students and the JobMaker package altered so it could be used by decimated industries to employ staff in existing roles, not just new ones.

Seek revealed last week it had the highest number of job ads posted in a month in its 23-plus-year history and applications were at the lowest level since 2012.

Liberal MP Julian Leeser, who chairs federal parliament’s joint standing committee on migration, said the government needed to respond to labour shortages in the skilled and unskilled workforce.

“Half a million temporary visa-holders left the country at the start of COVID,” he said.

“We know we have record job vacancies at the moment and from a range of different players in hospitality we’re hearing the shortages are serious and hampering business from opening and employing Australians.”

Mr Hawke did not say if he would consider a COVID recovery visa or whether there would be new measures to fill critical labour shortages in next month’s budget.

The government’s priority ­migration skilled occupation list includes 18 jobs primarily in healthcare, construction and IT.