Australia – 3,000 Papua New Guineans skilled workers

And Papua New Guineans have such a good reputation they are getting promoted faster than their Australian counterparts.

Latest estimates suggest up to 3000 skilled Papua New Guineans have moved to Australia.

Ben Imbun, a Senior Lecturer at the School of Management at the University of Western Sydney has been tracking their movements.

He told Jemima Garrett low wages in PNG are adding to the incentives to join the brain-drain.

IMBUN: They are doing blue collar workers to white collar managerial supervisory, mine geologists, engineers, so anything within that range, any job.

GARRETT: Papua New Guineans working in the resources industry are getting amazing pay in Australia. What did you find on that exactly?

IMBUN: Well amazing in terms of ah, I mean they are paid a lot a year in terms of comparing with what they get up there. They get a third of what an expatriate Australian or American or Canadian get up there. So when they have been trickling down and moving here they realise that they are paid as equal as anybody else. So whatever the extractive industry here is paying also covering the oil and gas. So I would think an average around 120 grand ok, so that’s quite a lot.

GARRETT: So people are getting two-thousand dollars a week?

IMBUN: Yeah that was what I was told and I’ve circulated a form to them to fill in, and that’s what they have ticked, most of them…

Choosen excerpts by JMM from

via Australia attracting PNG’s skilled workers | Pacific Beat | ABC Radio Australia.