457 visas and archaeology

[Denis Gojak]

Today Malcolm Turnbull announced that the 457 Visa system - which allows short-term skilled migration in targeted categories where potential Australian workers are in short supply - is to end.

Associated with the newspaper article is a list of professions from a long list that are currently part of the scheme, but which are recommended for removal.  I was very surprised to see Archaeologist among them [line 113], along with historian [111] and archivist 58].

I was not aware they were on the list, and assumed that either Australian unis had been churning out sufficient grads, or that the steady stream of backpacking archaeologists, some of them very good, filled our needs.

Its probably hard to judge from my desk in Sydney, but has there been a chronic shortage of qualified grads creating a bottleneck in Australia's booming economy?  Alternately do archaeologists appear as a symptom of the fairly fast, loose and opportunistic system that critics of the 457 visa stem say was readily exploited by smart business operators?

[I don't think I know anyone who came here under this system, but if we discuss this please be mindful that we are talking about the system, and not about  individual colleagues, regardless of their journey]

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Denis Gojak

PO Box 457

Newtown NSW 2042

Australia

e   den...@tpg.com.au

m  0400 474 405

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[Peter Ross]

It can't be a coincidence that Trump is also looking to 'reform' the H1-B visa in the US, which addresses exactly the same issues as the 457 visa in Australia. Hold on tight, its gonna be a bumpy ride.

---

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Sent: 18 April 2017 3:50 AM
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Subject: {OzArch} 457 visas and archaeology

 

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[Sean winter]

Hi Denis 

It was a massive factor in WA during the Boom where most companies had more foreign archaeologists working for them than locals. The transition was tough for many of them,  but lots stayed and are now citizens with families,  mortgages etc. At the end of the boom one company laid off their Australian archaeologists so the foreigners could keep their jobs and not get kicked out of the country because they were on 457s.

A long way from Sydney I know but still part of Oz ;). 

Cheers

Sean 

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[Shaun Canning]

One company?

Regards,

 

Dr Shaun Canning

Managing Director & Principal Heritage Advisor

0400 204 536             shaun....@achm.com.au

 

Australian Cultural Heritage Management

Brisbane | Melbourne | Sydney

1300 724 913                             www.achm.com.au

 

Find me at LinkedIn

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[Sean winter]

And the bit I forgot to add - they were really needed. Some companies were employing locals who only had the first one or two years of an archaeology degree because they were so desperate for people.  At the same time it coincided with the downturn in the Northern hemisphere. We would get applications from all over the world every time we advertised a position. 

Cheers 

Sean 

[Denis Gojak]

Thanks Sean

On the east coast you heard stories that there were vast amounts of archaeology being done 'somewhere over there' as people waved vaguely towards the setting sun.   

I guess its part of archaeology's continued growth that there is no longer a sense that you'd either know or know of everyone else in the profession which was still around, I seem to recall, in the 1980s.  Like when the surveys of the profession are published in AA, I'm always surprised at how reality differs from my perception of what is going across the profession across Australia [although, would a Portuguese archaeologist be expected to know what was going on in the Ukraine or Denmark - a comparable distance?].

But, if archaeology is no longer to be part of whatever 457 transforms into, can academia guarantee sufficient home-grown supply for the next resource boom and, as the flipside, how does the whole profession deal fairly with the expectation that a chunk of them will lose their jobs in the downturn and we lose people and their contribution to the discipline, or develop a low-skill dig-bum underclass?  Although we have the ANCATL it seems a way bigger structural issue than they have been concerned with in the past, and not primarily an academic issue either.

denis

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Denis Gojak

PO Box 457

Newtown NSW 2042

Australia

e   den...@tpg.com.au

m  0400 474 405

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[Sean winter]

Post-Boom lots of archaeologists who had walked into a decent paying job a few years earlier in WA ended up doing one of three things:

(i) leaving the discipline

(ii) toughing it out and trying to get a slice of what was left as the Boom conditions dried up; or

(iii) going back to study.

Exactly the same thing happened in the UK in 2008 as the GFC killed almost all archaeological work. I walked into a job in Scotland in 2005, but two years later extremely experienced friends and colleagues of mine couldn't buy a job. Most did one of the three things above, but some of those people ended up moving to WA because that's where the work was.

For those in WA who left the profession I know people who have become travel agents, gardeners, police officers, baristas, community development people, etc etc. But most of the graduates who have come out of UWA in the past couple of years have got a job. Some have gone east, some have stayed here. The change is that the work here now for grads is mostly casual whereas 6 years ago they would be guaranteed a permanent position.

I suspect our discipline will suffer from the closing of borders around the world. I think Australian archaeology is better for having all those people from all over the place bring new perspectives, skills and experiences, to what can be a pretty closed shop in Australia without that outside influence. Likewise for other countries being exposed to Australian archaeologists. I know being able to go and work overseas in a few different countries and being exposed to different ways of doing things made me a much better archaeologist in the long run. 

Cheers

Sean

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[Iain Stuart]

Apparently archaeologists were dropped from the 457 visa’s  because there was a lack of applications so presumably there are other ways of getting overseas archaeologists to work in Australia.

 

My concern is that choosing to be an archaeologist or for that matter a historian in Australia  is a decision that is done out of passion for the field rather than in the hope of great rewards. It would be a shame for people who have made that decision to be bumped from jobs by imported archaeologists – this is hardly the way for the profession to develop. It might be argued that foreign trained archaeologists bring in new skills and to some extent I agree. There are other archaeologists I know from Australia who have spent time overseas and come back with an enhanced skill set so there is more than one way for skills and expertise to be passed on.

 

I am concerned when archaeologists are working on Australian sites who lack any background in Australian archaeology or whose knowledge of Australian history is limited to what they picked up on a Fantail wrapper. I am not sure how they can then understand, assess and interpret the material they are dealing with.

 

Cheers

 

Dr Iain Stuart

 

JCIS Consultants

P.O. Box 2397

Burwood North

NSW 2134

Australia

 

(02) 97010191

Ia...@jcis.net.au

 

[tessa corkill]

Archaeologists on Fantale* wrappers? Ah, of course,  Indiana Jones & Lara Croft!
Cheers
Tessa C

* spelling, Iain (another very important archaeological skill).

--

[Michael Lever]

 

While I agree with Iain that a distinguishing feature of archaeology is the passion of its practitioners, I'd like  to hope that one can have one's cake and eat it - and be both passionate and paid. 

We are a  new profession, and don't seem to have yet found our niche in the professional spectrum. 

I'd hope that medical doctors would be motivated at least as much by humane considerations as their large pay packets. Yet on the other hand, I'd hardly expect the same to be true of lawyers other than human-rights advocates & practitioners.

The 'A' professions seem harder to pigeonhole in terms of underlying motivations. Accountants? Archaeologists? Architects?

N.B. As devils advocate - is bringing in Archaeologists under 457 visas at the risk of flooding the local archaeological job market, any worse Universities cranking out large numbers of archaeology graduates each year, above the capacity of the current job market to absorb?

Cheers

[Barry Green]

Hi Iain,

It would be interesting to have a national survey of working archaeologists in Australia to see the proportion of non-Australian trained archaeologists, and of them, how many are here on 457 visas. I have yet to meet any archaeologist from any part of the world who chose this path for the money. The majority of non-Australian trained archaeologists I know who have made Australia their home came here to continue practicing their passion, when doing so in the native country was no longer viable. The same goes for the Australian archaeologists I know who worked overseas when there were no jobs let alone opportunities for them here.

Your point about "imported" archaeologists taking away jobs from locals and thereby retarding the profession as a whole is absurd.

The elephant in the room in any discussion of what's really affecting job opportunities for local archaeologists, and I say this as a Victorian, is the massive disservice some universities have done and are continuing to do, in churning out archaeology graduates that there is no market demand for. Graduates, I may add, that have had little to no formal training that makes them market ready and whatever training they've had, they've gained off their own initiative working in the private sector while at uni.

The lack of formal training in the necessary theories, methods and practice to work in the private sector is offset by universities encouraging students to volunteer on commercial excavations. The "amazing volunteer opportunities" for students will seem far less amazing when they struggle to find paid work after they graduate when the next generation of volunteers fills their boots. 

I am a migrant archaeologist who was fortunate enough to get paid work here before I set up my own consultancy. I am now generating work for local archaeologists and I have only ever hired one overseas archaeologist on a visa to fill an immediate skills gap. I know of at least two other consultancies set up in Melbourne by fellow Irishmen who are also generating work for local archaeologists. Whatever way you look at it, in a country defined by immigration, migrants make a positive contribution to Australian society including professional archaeology.

Instead of pointing the finger at "imported" archaeologists for problems in the industry, a conversation needs to be had about the ratio of graduates to available paid positions and their ability to deliver in that role, in addition to the culture of exploitative volunteering for roles that otherwise would be paid. Its a problem that blaming the foreigner won't solve.

Cheers,

Barry

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[Jeannette Hope]

Archaeologists may well be concerned about unemployment cycles, but this has always been a fact of life for geologists, going back way before there was an archaeological profession. (One of my brothers is a geologist).   

 

The geological profession is also analysing what the change in 457 visas will mean.  Here is a current comment from the Australian Institute of Geoscientists, with some  interesting statistics.  https://www.aig.org.au/tag/unemployment/

 

Jeannette

 

From: oza...@googlegroups.com [mailto:oza...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Barry Green
Sent: Thursday, 20 April 2017 6:00 PM
To: oza...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: {OzArch} 457 visas and archaeology

 

Hi Iain,

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[Shaun Canning]

Supply and demand is a fact of life for all professions, not just our small island of denial......!

Regards,

 

Dr Shaun Canning

Managing Director & Principal Heritage Advisor

0400 204 536             shaun....@achm.com.au

 

Australian Cultural Heritage Management

Brisbane | Melbourne | Sydney

1300 724 913                             www.achm.com.au

 

Find me at LinkedIn

[Luke Kirkwood]

https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/23289/1/ulm_etal_2013b.pdf

Sean and co has been doing this for years

"This profile is further contextualised by results that show that, although over one-quarter (28.3%) of respondents were born overseas (down from 32% in 2005) (compared with the general Australian population where in 2006 around 24% were born overseas; Australian Bureau of Statistics 2008:209), the overseas born dominate the workforce for those over 65 years of age (Figure 2). In comparison, in the UK only 7% of archaeologists were from outside the UK (Aitchison and Edwards 2008:53). The reduction in overseas-born practitioners may reflect the retirement of the first generation of Australian archaeologists trained overseas before the widespread availability of domestic university programmes."

Questions on visa type and numbers I suspect were outside of scope for the study, but I suspect that number would be pretty low for 457.

We can all put away the pitchforks.

As far as graduates from Unis go, this is a trend across the university spectrum not restricted to Archaeology. Back in my day, we had 800 first year biology students. Half of those wanted to be marine biologists. There were twenty job ads for that specialty that year. 

Students obviously have a right to study the course they want to. It's up to them to sink or swim in the professional market. If they lack the skills, in a State like Victoria they will fail because of the legislation. If they are in Queensland, they will prosper due to the lack of regulation and oversight. It's a multifacted issue that can only be 'fixed™' if we as industry participants co-ordinate lobbying for change. Simple as that. But honestly who has time/money for that. Apparently not archaeologists.

[Tony Lowe]

 

I think the opportunity to work overseas in archaeology is a great one and can be very important to a successful career.  Working in another country allows one to experience a range of archaeological sites not available in one’s homeland.  I was very lucky that I worked as a volunteer overseas and that that led to employment in the Middle East.  My passion for archaeology and the past, when working overseas, was the same as it is here – the romance of archaeology as they say.  I don’t think people choose to study and work in archaeology without having passion.

 

Sometimes I think of all the other archaeology students in my year at uni and what professions they ended up in.  Not in archaeology anyway.  So I agree that things work themselves out.  If there are no jobs when students graduate they go onto something else.  I was just lucky.  I  think though that most people study archaeology not with the idea of future employment but as part of their education.

 

Working on different types of site, potentially overseas, and so dealing with different challenges, means better archaeological knowledge and practice in my opinion.  Working with archaeologists from overseas is a plus, not a minus.  If they come out here and choose to stay, which can’t be an easy decision, I think they are likely to be motivated individuals who can make a real contribution.

 

Tony Lowe

Casey & Lowe Pty Ltd

T: (02) 9568 5375

M: 0409 988 846

E: tony...@bigpond.com

W: www.caseyandlowe.com.au

 

 

From: oza...@googlegroups.com [mailto:oza...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Barry Green
Sent: Thursday, 20 April 2017 6:00 PM
To: oza...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: {OzArch} 457 visas and archaeology

 

Hi Iain,

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[Michael Lever]

Sean & others- I agree that supply and demand are a basic feature of employment opportunity & overseas placement. My own parents were brought here here during a shortage of teachers.

 

However the situation with students is quire different.

 

Faculties other than Archaeology take radically different approaches to student intake and graduation.

In teaching, nursing, medicine and many other degrees (which have far greater demand than Archaeology), student intake is tightly regulated against anticipated demand.

This is largely a feature of two factors:

1)  The duty of these faculties to provide quantified industry placement as part of their courses - one cannot graduate from these courses without industry placement.

2) A sense of ethical duty to students who now take on often huge debts to attain a degree, to gain employment based on this degree.

The days are over when the majority of university students were of predominantly entitled middle to upper-middle class background, able to absorb the impact of 4 years study for no financial return.

The current reality is one of students working part to full time while studying, often taking semesters off to save for the next semester. And therefore often taking 6 years and more to complete their undergrad.

The realisation that they have little to no employment chances in a subject they have sacrificed hugely to study,  is one I have often witnessed as traumatic and shattering - and is invariably one that they have not been prepared for by their universities.

Cheers

[Iain Stuart]

I agree with Tony, my experience is that archaeologists with some experience overseas often mean they are far better at understanding the excavation process in particular in identifying stratigraphy and features in plan and section. I also think that attending conformances in archaeology but also in a broader disciplinary scope (such as the Industrial Heritage congresses run by TICCIH) often helps understand the interpretation and management of heritage sites and puts the Australian experience in a broader context.

 

My concern lies in the situations of archaeologists (and other heritage professionals I might add) lacking the appropriate understanding of Australian archaeology and history in order to perform the tasks that they are required to do. I am not bagging those individuals who come to Australia and commit learning all the literature and the history that’s great but I have come across others whose attitude to Australian archaeology is decidedly underwhelming and they don’t seem to be aware of anything outside their immediate circle of their particular project.

 

Mind you I am equally worried about the Governments model citizen requirements which seem to want to straightjacket people into a very right wing view of what an Australian should be.

[Michael Lever]

Apologies Shaun, not Sean 

[Shaun Canning]

Hi Michael,

 

I think we all agree that turning out countless graduates in any discipline where there is limited opportunity for meaningful employment is morally suspect and ultimately pointless.

 

And while we may think Universities have some sort of moral imperative not to oversupply or over service certain sectors of the market, from within the university system, they are staring down the barrel of economic rationalism like everyone else. Supply and demand dictates their behaviour as much as it does any other sector of the market place.

 

In other words, moral dilemmas don’t put bums on seats – which is what the Universities require to survive these days.

 

The days of a free education where these conversations would not have reverberated with questions of moral outrage are gone, and they are not coming back.  

 

We can debate the relative merits of the prevailing economic systems and the way they function for higher education all day, but it won’t change the underlying driver requiring universities to put bums on seats and churn out newly minted graduates in whatever discipline those graduates are prepared to pay for…...

 

Regards,

Dr Shaun Canning
Managing Director and Principal Heritage Advisor
M		0400 204 536
E		Shaun....@achm.com.au
Australian Cultural Heritage Management
Adelaide | Brisbane | Melbourne | Sydney | Perth
P		1300 724 913
W		www.achm.com.au
Find me at LinkedIn

--

[Michael Lever]

Hi Shaun,

I find it hard to understand how it is that many heritage professionals - who make their living through advocating that values other than commercial ones must be reflected in commercial development, and through insisting that often intangible heritage values must constrain development profit - suddenly turn into economic rationalists and laissez-faire conservatives when it comes to the welfare of students and the behavior of universities.

I'm puzzled why attitudes towards students among archaeologists generally often seem to vary between the 'hard knock' school of the Four Yorkshiremen, or a naive Spencerian Survival of the Fittest; all generally underpinned with a lack of empathy that would have made Ayn Rand proud.

It seems extremely contrary that heritage professionals whose own contracts and reports are painstakingly drafted to protect heritage and themselves from the big businesses they often deal with - should be willing to throw student welfare under the bus of university profits and lack of accountability.

Lets not beat around the bush - the largest businesses involved in archaeology in Australia are the small number of massive, inter and often multi national corporations that are universities. They sell degrees, often to  uninformed youth, and sell research to funding bodies. Yet, the university sector for some reason expects to be able to hide from critique of unacceptable commercial practice behind the academic non-commercial aura of yesteryear, while simultaneously being granted immunity from examination of the rapacious practices that currently underpin it. Paid higher than consultants, and with relatively protected jobs (per Ulm studies), academic archaeologists crying 'poor uni' remind me of nothing more than Gina Rinehardt lamenting her misfortune in that Australian workers would not work for African wages (that's where 457s took off).

I'm not sure why archaeology faculties should not be expected to act towards their students in keeping with good or best practice models from the disciplines I've mentioned, which are far larger than archaeology. 

Its all very puzzling - but then again I am a "chardonnay sipping socialist" (Stuart, I. 2016. Ozarch) who doesn't believe in letting rotten things be. 

Off to make a T-shirt about it....

[Shaun Canning]

I don’t think anyone has turned into anything Michael, nor (generally) disagree with your sentiments.

 

I was merely pointing out the obvious, and sadly, in the face of which we are all but pi**ing in the wind…….

 

Regards,

Dr Shaun Canning
Managing Director and Principal Heritage Advisor
M		0400 204 536
E		Shaun....@achm.com.au
Australian Cultural Heritage Management
Adelaide | Brisbane | Melbourne | Sydney | Perth
P		1300 724 913
W		www.achm.com.au
Find me at LinkedIn

 

From: oza...@googlegroups.com [mailto:oza...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Michael Lever
Sent: Friday, 21 April 2017 2:24 PM
To: OzArch <oza...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: {OzArch} Re: 457 visas and archaeology

 

Hi Shaun,

--

[Eleanor Crosby]

Hear Hear, Michael. And its not just in social sciences.

Which raises a question about why archaeologists do not have a body
(like, say the computer science mob) which both monitors computing programs
and judges universities on their competence, and thereby acts to approve
that the unis dish out an adequate education so that overseas students
can turn their visas around into citizenship.
Both archaeology and computing devolved from academia to now well and
truly profession dominated. ACS is strong. We need to boost up AACAI or
establish an equivalent body with clout.
Eleanor

[Sean winter]

Hi Michael

As a fellow Chardonnay sipper I thoroughly enjoyed that rant and would like to buy one of the t-shirts when you are finished designing them. But I should point out that 75% of uni staff these days (like myself) are sessional, short term contract, low paid and entirely unprotected. Unis chew these employees up and spit them out on a regular basis, in the same way they do their students. The  tertiary system is thoroughly broken.

Cheers

SEan

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[Gary Vines]

From what I can gather, Archaeologist is to be removed from the list of occupations available to the new temporary skills visas (along with goat farmer)

I have always presumed the policy is about lowering wages and reducing the power of unions, as well as allowing business to avoid the costs of training. Assuming the overseas workers are paid less than citizens, and this averages about 20% less, then there is a potential saving to business of a billion dollars for each year's intake over the last 10 years. Mind you if this is true, the government is probably loosing quarter of a billion in tax because of the lower wages. Now 250 million dollars would go a long way to training people to fill whatever skills gap might exist. 

The provision of postgraduate courses in professional archaeology might be seen as cashing in on the people who have undertaken archaeology degrees thinking it could be a vocational course and then been disappointed. There might have been a brief period in the mid 2000s when this was an almost reasonable expectation. Personally I think an archaeology degree is an excellent education and does improve employment options, but also helps people lead personally fulfilling lives by better understanding their world. Most of my generation studied it because we felt it was worthwhile to be educated for its own sake, and this might somehow lead to future benefits. If there are unreasonable expectations among archaeology students, this forum, and perhaps Sean Ulm's Survey Results for the State of the Australian Archaeological Profession might help better inform them. What is still needed is better information about the number of students enrolled and graduating from archaeology courses, and statistics on what proportion find work in the field.