Healthcare workers hold placards at a picket line outside St Thomas’ Hospital in London. AFP
The Western state of Australia has a lucrative pitch to British workers who are currently reeling under low wages and poor cost of living in UK. A delegation from the Australian state will visit UK later this month to recruit as many as 31,000 doctors, police officers and teachers with the promise of high and better wages.
Officials are planning to highlight that Australia can outdo Britain in terms of wages, which have remained stagnant in the country since the 2008 financial crisis.
The campaign comes amid a backdrop of month-long protests led by UK workers demanding better pay and living conditions from the government.
As per Independent, lawmakers and ministers in UK have done little to address the issues of workers and push for higher wages. Adding to the troubles of an already distressed workforce, the UK government on Wednesday announced its plan to encourage doctors to give fewer sick notes to ill people to keep them at work.
‘We are here to steal your workers’
Pitching the new campaign, Paul Papalia, a Western Australian minister reportedly said, “We are here to steal your workers by offering them a better life in one of the most beautiful places on the planet.”
“Our wages are higher and our cost of living is lower. Our health system is world-class. You will be taken care of,” Papalia added according to ITV News.
The delegation is also on the lookout for miners, plumbers, mechanics and builders who can “have it all” in the Australian state. They also boasted of low energy bills which will cost “almost half in Australia, with the savings spent on 183 pints of beer, 110 roast dinners or 500 jars of Marmite.”
‘An unfortunate choice of words’
British ministers have shown their distaste for the kind of words the Western Australian delegation has chosen to make its pitch.
Chairman of the Commons health and social care select committee, Steve Brine, said, “Any country is obviously entitled to import health care workers – as we do in the UK from elsewhere – but there’s nothing to say our people have to go.”
A Tory MP said that Australia’s choice of the word ‘steal’ was ‘unfortunate’. Paul Bristow said, “We need to demonstrate the benefits of working in the UK to help them stay.”
“It shows that we need to redouble our efforts to recruit new nurses, new doctors and demonstrate the benefits a career in the UK offers,” he added.
Can UK workers earn more in Australia?
According to data released by the Office for National Statistics, the Western Australian Government and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, pay is considerably higher in Western Australia than in Britain.
The latest data shows $65,000 (?38,420) is the average median wage in Australia as opposed to ?32,300, which is the average median wage in UK as of 2022.
In addition to this, the Australian city of Perth boasts an average of 8.8 sunshine hours a day, making it Australia’s sunniest city.
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