Quotes of the Day

At 57, Susan Brighenti can still pick a large bin of oranges in just over an hour. The trouble is, few other Australians will even try to keep up. Last year, the citrus farmer from Griffith, New South Wales, was forced to leave 15 acres (6 hectares) of Clementine mandarins, worth about $300,000, hanging from the trees in her family's orchard.

Unable to find 20 pickers for the two-week job, Brighenti and her family had to ignore the mandarins to concentrate on their more valuable navel oranges, 80% of which are shipped fresh to markets in the Middle East, Asia, the U.S. and Europe.

Things got worse. "By the time we got our navel orders done, the mandarins were too mature to pick for the market," says Brighenti, who has 500 acres (202 ha) of citrus near the Murrumbidgee River. "We actually had to pay people to pick them off the trees and throw them on the ground when the season was finished. We just plowed them in."

The desperate shortage of fruit pickers in rural Australia is just one part of the wider story of a country that cannot find enough people to keep its economy running at full speed. As Australia's resources boom rolls on, fueled by strong Asian demand for iron ore and coal, the high wages paid by mining companies have drawn workers from around the country and helped cause shortages elsewhere.

With a national unemployment rate of around 4%, employers in a wide range of industries now complain loudly that they can't find staff, especially in the resource-rich states of Queensland and Western Australia. From hospitals to bakeries and construction companies to locksmiths, bosses are increasingly looking to other countries to fill the gaps. In the global employment market, Australia has a "positions vacant" sign in neon lights.

"The labor shortage is so acute they'll take a warm body in Perth" is Immigration Minister Chris Evans' grim joke. Evans recently announced a big increase in Australia's migration program and a greater willingness to accept semi-skilled and unskilled workers. Permanent migration in 2008 will hit its highest level on record, with 190,000 newcomers, most of them skilled workers from Britain, New Zealand, China, India and the Philippines.

That's an enormous number for a country of 21 million, but it doesn't tell the full story about employers' desperation. Under the section 457 temporary business-visa scheme, companies will bring in more than 100,000 additional skilled workers for up to four years — three times as many as when the program began in 2002.

Some experts question the decision to fling open the doors. Bob Birrell, director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Melbourne's Monash University, is deeply skeptical of the shift and thinks Australia should carefully weigh the costs and benefits. "We're in new territory," he says. "It amounts to a major change in immigration policy." Birrell is not convinced Australia needs to import low-skilled workers like fruit pickers. "We clearly do have plenty of people who can do these jobs," he argues. "It's a matter of changing the wages and conditions to get them to do it."

The huge growth in migrant numbers — about 1.2 million have arrived in the past decade — also puts cities like Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane under pressure as they struggle to provide affordable housing and cope with congested roads and public-transport systems. Australia already has a shortage of construction workers. By creating more demand for houses, roads and infrastructure, Birrell says, boosting migrant numbers only makes that labor shortage more acute. It's like a dog chasing its tail.

There's also evidence, he says, that some people on the 457 visas have been underpaid and overworked. Originally, the only migrants on these visas were well paid and highly skilled, but as Australia brings in less-skilled workers for areas like the catering and restaurant industry, the potential for exploitation is greater.

The country will depend on migrant workers for a long time yet — especially younger ones like Henry de Castro, a Portuguese carpenter brought to Canberra to make molds for concrete pours in big building projects. His boss, Graciete Ferreira, of Pacific Formwork, says her business could triple in size if she could get more like Castro, but tougher English-language requirements for migrants have stymied her.

Castro says there is no lack of carpenters in Portugal who'd love to move to Australia. A brother and a cousin have already migrated, and another brother hopes to follow. "I want to make this my country," he says. "I love Portugal, but if you're not economically stable you can't have a nice life. There, the medium wage for me was about €400 ($640) a month. Here I get more than that a week. And everything's a rush over there. Here people are more laid back."

At 31, Castro is doubly useful. He not only provides a skill Australia lacks, but his youth helps offset the ageing of the population. The next decade will see a surge of retirees and a shrinkage in the work force. Migrants will be needed to care for ageing Australians, as well as start the families needed to keep the country working.

That, plus the forecast of continued growth in India and China, means Australia's vast appetite for migrants is unlikely to be sated anytime soon. Evans says Australians have to realize that the debate about migration now is about a shortage of labor, not of skills.

Farmers like Brighenti already understand that. She was born into the citrus industry, which her grandfather helped pioneer in Griffith almost a century ago. But the professional pickers her family's relied on for most of the intervening years are no longer around. Today, there is better money and permanent work elsewhere. But fresh fruit cannot be picked by machine. Somebody must be found to do the job.

At the moment, young foreign backpackers are the single biggest source of fruit pickers, but farmers complain they don't stay long and are usually inexperienced. To help Brighenti and others in key citrus districts like Swan Hill in Victoria, Australia is considering a trial program in which South Pacific islanders will be let in as guest workers on a seasonal basis to pick the fruit. Evans says the move has the potential to help provide economic stability to often poor island nations, and insists "this isn't coolie labor of $8-10 an hour."

The idea conjures images of the late 19th century, when South Pacific islanders were forced or lured to work on Queensland sugar plantations. But farmers insist they will pay the islanders no less than Australian workers. "We're not looking for cheaper labor, we're looking for a labor force that will come back year after year," says Brighenti. At $23 a bin after tax, the pay is attractive, she says. "If you're a young, fit person, eight or ten bins of oranges a day is not unheard of."

Islanders are the last hope, she adds: "We can't plan to expand unless we can sort out the picking mess. It's such a headache: tempers fray and when you've got boats to meet and buyers waiting in China and Japan ... they're not interested when you say you haven't got the pickers. We can find the markets, but it all comes unraveled when you can't get the fruit off in time."

• Roy Eccleston