Back to reality

Rita is back in the land of the freezing (leaving Port Douglas’ 26 degree sweaty temperature at 9.30 yesterday morning to return to Hobart’s 6 degrees at 10.45 pm last night is a great grounding agent!), and thinking over her eating experiences in Far North Queensland, as compared to Hobart.

Yes, they sure know how to deliver customer service a lot better (on the whole) than we do. Their economy is geared to fully utilize and maximize that consistent tourist dollar. Most of the shops along the main street in PD being open till 10.00 pm-ish every balmy evening as they attract the leisurely strollers, relaxed and with full tummies, and in holiday mode, attests to that fact.

Yet they still have identical problems to us – the labour and skills shortage. It’s evident everywhere, with a bit of conversation with locals, and observation.

Today’s Mercury yet again very explicitly demonstrates a clear path of the same. If you’re a Customer Service specialist, you can select exactly where you want to work, and probably have a say in the wage component as well, if you are what you say you are!

I think it’s fair to compare PD to somewhere like Swansea or Cygnet or Strahan, with younger people generally being more reluctant to leave the city lights and work in these more outlying areas with little or no night life. The difficulty in attracting and retaining these workers is a constant conundrum but one that, if we are to attract repeat business, from either tourists or locals, we need to address now.

Amongst the transient workers in PD is a Welsh 23 year old beauty therapist. She came to Oz on a working holiday, with first stop being PD, and work in a salon there. As the visa only gives you a specific amount of time to work, in order to be able to remain in Oz, which she loves, she has to sign up to doing 3 months on the fruit picking trail, thus contributing significantly to our food production industry.

She shares a rental home in PD with other young backpackers, who will all also be doing the same fruit picking and harvesting in outlying areas round the country. Their accommodation, and sometimes food, is also provided in these situations, thus making it a worthwhile way for them to see other parts of the country, and live and save money at the same time.

We must think more intelligently about Tassie in relation to the rest of the world. Workers for all our businesses aren’t going to magically appear on trees for us to pick when we want them! We need to have something that they actually want – not what we tell them we think they should want.