Skills wither as districts lose big, long-term employers

A dearth of jobs in regional areas is forcing highly skilled workers to abandon their original professions.

Project manager Angela Gonzalez at Greys Bay, Bowen. Picture: Stephen Darwen

A dearth of jobs in regional areas is forcing highly skilled workers to abandon their original professions and take up lower-skilled or more generic jobs because it’s the only work they can find.

Almost a year on from the first major redundancy round at Clive Palmer’s Queensland Nickel refinery in Townsville where more than 1000 workers eventually lost jobs, Townsville is still grappling with poor jobs growth forcing ­families to switch to fly-in, fly-out work or to uproot from North Queensland altogether.

“A lot of us as regional mayors feel like there’s two economies, you’ve got Brisbane and Melbourne and Sydney and the rest of Australia ... and the reality is that workers and job hunters in regional areas are going through an entirely different experience outside of Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney,” Townsville mayor Jenny Hill told The Australian.

Ms Hill is among regional mayors and community leaders calling on the federal government to ­assess ways it can boost regional jobs growth as a generation of young workers and families leave towns for capital cities in pursuit of decent job opportunities and ­stable, sustainable employment.

She knows the pain better than most after witnessing former QNI workers and young professionals throughout the region struggling to find jobs and skilled work in the wake of the refinery’s collapse. Many of those who haven’t left have been forced to put their qualifications on the shelf and look for jobs in other fields.

Chemical engineer Angela Gonzalez, 27, left the Yabulu ­refinery in December 2014 and ­relocated to Bowen where her husband found higher-paying, more sustainable work at the Abbot Point coal terminal.

Handing in her notice at QNI, Mrs Gonzalez knew the wait for the next job could be a long one.

“I knew the project pipeline up in Bowen wasn’t huge, and there was a chance that the only work I could find would involve an hour-long commute each day, which at the time, I wasn’t prepared to do,” she said.

Mrs Gonzalez worked for Xstrata Coal and QNI in Townsville, but has spent the past two years in various jobs including news photography, floristry and bookkeeping, before signing on with Whitsunday Regional Council mayor Andrew Willcox in April as project manager.

She’s happy in the position but misses the engineering.

“It’s a shame because Bowen is a great place to live. I’ve got my family here and all my friends, but we also know that there are only certain circumstances where you can stay here for work,” she said.

Local builder Terry Pilcher said Mrs Gonzalez’s situation was becoming more common as large employers and the government default to large companies for contracts, rather than local builders and contractors. “They’re draining all the jobs, all the skills out of the regions,” Mr Pilcher said.

His company has 15 full-time staff and no chance at leading any government contracts such as a $50 million highway upgrade, a $10m hospital upgrade or a $5m police station upgrade in Bowen because the tender process favours larger builders based in big cities.

According to Ms Hill, Malcolm Turnbull’s City Deals have boosted spirits in regional areas but more needs to be done to address electricity pricing and the cost of utilities which can put off large-scale employers.

The region had a win when the Palaszczuk government signed off on the $22 billion Adani Carmichael mine with headquarters slated for Townsville.

“You’ve got government infrastructure (contracts), which are short term, and they help, but what regional areas want is long-term jobs, which is why projects like (Adani) are really important, that’s 60 years’ work,” Ms Hill said.