Pay young to head west, Barnett says

RESOURCE-RICH Western Australia is calling on Julia Gillard to provide a $10,000 cash incentive to lure young workers to relocate.

RESOURCE-RICH Western Australia is calling on Julia Gillard to provide a $10,000 cash incentive to lure young workers to relocate from the east coast to help plug its worsening skills gap.

The call by Premier Colin Barnett, backed by the state's Chamber of Commerce and Industry, comes amid moves by the federal government to pave the way for companies to enter bloc migration agreements for groups of overseas workers to work on resource mega-projects.

"We need to encourage particularly younger skilled Australians to move across the country to where the work is," Mr Barnett told ABC radio.

"And if the commonwealth government wanted to play a really constructive role in this that's what they should be supporting.

"If they were to give, for example, a $10,000 grant to people to relocate to where the jobs are in Western Australia and northern Queensland, that would do more for the national interest than probably anything else."

WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive James Pearson said the state needed to bring more skilled workers from interstate and overseas.

"We have indicated to the government that we are comfortable with the idea of an appropriate incentive to get more people to Western Australia," he said.

But Australian Mineral and Mines Association spokeswoman Minna Knight said such a strategy had been tried before and "not been particularly successful".

"It takes more than just a dollar incentive to attract and retain employees when it comes to resource projects," she said.

"If monetary incentives were the only issue we wouldn't have a problem attracting workers to our sector, given the average workers in our sector receives in excess of $100,000 per annum.

"A greater degree of co-ordination from all levels of government could lead to improved access to quality education and childcare, affordable housing and reliable community services."

Like many businesses across WA, mining and construction equipment firm WesTrac is struggling to find skilled workers.

"We are continually pushing to fill our skilled needs, both onsite in the northwest and in the Perth metro area," WesTrac human resources general manager Robert Greig said.

"So we are meeting our clients' needs, but it's a struggle and it doesn't look like it's going to get any easier."

Mr Greig welcomed the idea of greater incentives to encourage skilled workers to move west, but he added that other states also faced labour shortages.