‘We need this influx’: Regional towns beg for more migrants — and more houses for them to live in

For years regional leaders have pleaded for more migration, not less, as small towns slowly die and tens of thousands of jobs go unfilled, from baristas, hair dressers and nail salon workers to tradies, office professionals and fruit pickers.

“Regional towns will die if we don’t get immigration right,” Port Hedland Mayor Peter Carter said.

“I know people sometimes say we should stop immigration, I understand that. I understand people in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide are upset, they can’t get a house and so forth, but in regional Australia, so many businesses out here can’t get staff.”

Port Hedland, 1600 kilometres north of Perth in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, has a population of around 15,000, but Mr Carter said towns like his need to be “100,000-plus”.

“It doesn’t matter what incentives you give to Australians, they’re not going to move to regions,” he said.

“You can offer $5000, free cars — people who live in the city would never go live in Bendigo or Ballarat, it’s not going to happen. Why would they? They like the lifestyle, you’ll never change that. People come from all over the world and live here, they want to work. It’s not taking jobs away from other Australians because they don’t want to live here anyway.”

MORE: Where the population has boomed most and why

There were 65,000 job vacancies outside of the five major capitals Australia in February, according to the Regional Australia Institute — but this figure is mostly for skilled roles and does not account for the increasing demand for unskilled and seasonal workers.

The top three occupations for vacancies were professionals (26 per cent), technicians and trade workers (17 per cent) and clerical and administrative workers (13 per cent).

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