Aust. call for work permits

Press, 30 April 1981, Page 6

Aust. call for work permits

NZPA correspondent > Sydney The time had come for Australia to consider adopting a work-permit system for New Zealanders, according to an article in the Melbourne “Age” yesterday. Claude Forell, writing about the passports issue, said that as New Zealand sunk deeper'into .the economic doldrums, partly through its own mismanagement, the Muldoon Government has dumped its surplus labour and disgruntled citizens on to the Australian workforce and social security system. . “It is this growing and uncontrolled influx that should concern Canberra at least as much as the necessity to screen arrivals from abroad for criminals, drug runners, terrorists, and other undesirables.” . Also, he: said, Mr Muldoon’s indignation about Australia’s insistence on passports for Tasman travel might deserve more sympathy if he had been a consistent advocate of free movement between the two countries. “But in July, 1975, the unlovely Mr Muldoon, then

Leader of .> the. Opposition; pandered to-the . demands of the New Zealand trade unions by promising, that a National Government would require AustraliansHntending to stay in New Zealand to obtain work permits.” . Forell said that the then Labour Immigration Minister (Mr Colman) had to explain to Mr Muldoon that more New Zealanders were going to Australia to settle than Australians coming to live in New Zealand. The question now was whether the “significant and uncontrolled” movement of population across the Tasman, with its pressures on the depressed Australian labour market and overburdened social welfare system, and its distortion of immigration priorities, was in Australia’s national interest, Forell said., “It may well be, if the Australian economy recovers more swiftly than New Zealand’s, that Australia will need a rapid infusion of skilled labour,” he said. “But a flexible immigration policy should allow for that. The problem with New Zealanders is that they are

totally outside the normal and screening processes.”

Australia’s Immigration and Ethnic Affairs Minister (Mr lan Macphee) tbld the Australian Federal Parliament yesterday that New Zealand had rejected: an Australian proposal-; to '.adopt a common" immigration entry and screening process to detect undesirables.

Discussions held in New Zealand -recently had disclosed that the procedures could not be harmonised sufficiently, Mr Macphee said.

Surveys of passengers arriving from New Zealand in the last six weeks had shown that between 7 per cent and 12 per cent were not carrying any form of personal identification either on their person or: in their baggage, he said.

“That means that between 30,000 and 50,000 people had absolutely no identification on arrival in Australia.

In addition, 30 per cent of passengers surveyed had no authoritative identification such as passports or driving licences,” Mr Macphee said.