City of Albany officers to recommend councillors endorse development of Designated Area Migration Agreement

The final piece of the puzzle that could make it significantly easier to welcome international migrants to the Great Southern to ease long-term worker shortages looks set to fall into place in the coming weeks. City of Albany councillors will be advised to support the development of a Great Southern designated area migration agreement at a committee meeting on Tuesday. The recommendation, laid out by officers in the community and corporate services committee agenda, suggests council request the chief executive advise the recently established DAMA working group that the City will participate in the application process. Conditions of the City’s involvement, as set out in the recommendation, are that it will make a contribution of $25,000 towards the development of a business plan, and that if a funding gap was to arise, any additional funding would be subject to a further report to council. If the committee, and subsequently the council at its September 27 ordinary meeting, pass the agenda item without amendments, it would be the last of the region’s 11 local governments to confirm commitment to the proposal. A proposed funding model suggested the cost of putting together a successful business plan would be $100,000. The City’s commitment of $25,000 would be $15,000 short of the suggested commitment in the model. However, the shires of Denmark, Plantagenet and Kojonup have made commitments above those suggested in the model. Those three shires committed an extra $9000 between them. A DAMA for the region would allow employers in the Great Southern to fill vacancies with migrant workers if they had been unable to fill the positions by advertising locally. The region’s need for additional workers must be demonstrated through a business case to secure a DAMA. The WALGA Great Southern Country zone decided to start the information gathering process for its potential application at its August meeting, without waiting for the City to confirm its participation. A working group was formed at the meeting, consisting of the chief executives of the shires of Kojonup, Katanning and Plantagenet along with zone president Chris Pavlovich and representatives of Regional Development Australia Great Southern and the Great Southern Development Commission. RDA Great Southern’s Simon Lyas told the Advertiser in July that he expected development of a business plan and application could take “six to eight months”.