Australian Employment - Is it time to scrap the 457 and the issue of unpaid internships

Yesterday a friend posted on Facebook a link to an article in the Australian edition of The Guardian newspaper.  The article discussed employment and unemployment.  The belief was that unemployment was caused by insufficient jobs and too many immigrants working on the 457 visa.

I want to rebuke this and say what Senator Eric Abetz and Prime Minister Tony Abbott have been saying for some months.  There are jobs out there if you truly want to work.  New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key shares this sentiment and has maintained it for quite some time.  I talk to quite a few people and if you're willing to do the work it's there.  It may not be what you want but work is work and once you have a job it is always much easier to find other work.

Now there is talk that foreigners are stealing Aussie jobs and while there may be some truth to this, the reason is that Aussies just aren't willing to do the work.  If they were then they'd have the jobs and foreigners would be left out in the cold.

Another bone of contention for those on the left side of politics is the issue of unpaid internships.  They say that it is exploitation.  Who says that reward for work needed to be monetary?  Look, people can always make more money but we can't always gain experience.  Many of us only have until about 30-35 to get experience in our chosen field before we have to resign ourselves to dead end jobs we hate.  So if we're willing to work for free to gain experience and to gain an edge over others then let us without trying to control our decisions. 

The simple fact is, when you don't have experience nobody is willing to pay you and that is where internships come in .  Yeah you may work for no money short term but in the long term you'll be much better off.  This is something that unions seem to forget.  They seem not to realise that a reward for work isn't always economic, sometimes it's about creating opportunities and without experience, you simply do not have the same opportunities.

It shouldn't be up to the Government to tell us how we can and can't spend our time and what we must or must not work for.  Nobody forces people to do an unpaid internship.  People agree to do them because of the long term reward, so I say let people.  Without unpaid internships some people may never get experience and therefore never reach their potential and that would be more of a tragedy than not getting paid for a few months.