One of the most common things I hear from business owners and employers right across the Territory is, “I can’t get staff”. This is right across all industries, professional services, trades, construction, hospitality, tourism and unskilled general labour.

Dr Sam McMahon

Many very small enterprises are hanging on with just the owners and family to carry a load that used to be shared with staff, owners, kids, extended family working 12-hour plus days, 7 days a week. For others it has meant scaling back to fit the available staff, at a time when they should be maximising every opportunity post-COVID lockdowns. I know many hotels that have been operating at as low as 25 per cent capacity, not because demand isn’t there but due to a lack of staff to service the rooms.

I have put forward and been successful at seeing implementation of several schemes to provide more labour, including removing the cap on the hours international students can work. I have facilitated the application of the Seasonal Worker Program during the COVID lockdown to bring in agricultural labour for the NT and recently announced the long-awaited Agricultural Visa.

These measures have helped plug gaps, but the demand keeps growing at a seemingly insatiable rate. Yet there is a workforce, ready, willing and able to step up and take some of the load, and that is aged pensioners.

Not every aged pensioner is able to work or wants to, but a lot of them do, and many are already travelling around our rural, regional and remote areas as so called “grey nomads”.

Under current rules, someone on the aged pension can earn $300/fortnight up to $7800 per annum, without it affecting their pension. On average this would equate to around five hours/week, work for the year.

This limit needs to be increased or removed.

The immediate benefit is the employer gets an often highly skilled and experienced employee. Many retirees have skills and experience in a range of jobs needed in tourism, hospitality, and regional and remote small businesses. Many also have professional degrees, trades, technical and scientific expertise.

Pensioners will benefit from extra discretionary income; they will then spend some of the extra money on local goods and services so local business will benefit from extra income.

Under my proposal, whilst their pensions would not be affected or reduced, people would pay normal income tax on the extra money they earn above the tax-free threshold, so the Federal Government gets extra taxation revenue.

Most goods and services that people will spend their discretionary income on attract GST, so the State/Territory gets the extra GST revenue.

Let’s allow our retirees to fill labour shortage gaps and earn some extra income if they’d like to.

Another highly underutilised workforce exists on our indigenous communities. There are a huge number of factors involved in why unemployment is so high on communities even when employment exists nearby.

Two small changes that could address this gap are having industry and employer consultation and involvement in training to produce job-ready participants for their industry.

The involvement of local employers in designing appropriate training and participating in its delivery is key to avoid the “training for trainings’ sake” treadmill. The second is to incentivise CDP and employment services providers, on placing people in jobs, not having them on their books.

Sam McMahon is the incumbent Senator for the NT and the current Senate candidate for the Liberal Democrats.

Note: This is paid content. The NT Independent has offered the same advertising opportunities to all candidates equally, along with the same offer to all parties for the 2022 Federal Election.