Friday, September 19, 2008

How about this to attract skills?

I am all for developing innovative practices to address skill and labour shortages, but the recent announcement by a North West Queensland Council to sell parcels of land for $1 to attract targetted skill sets, certainly has to be the best one yet!

People interested in the land must meet certain criteria. The town is particularly looking for a vet, a hairdresser and all trades, including truck drivers.

To apply for the land grab, interested parties must have less than $500,000 in combined assets and pre-approval from a bank to build a home. They must complete the dwelling within two years and occupy the residence for at least a year. Applicants will go into a raffle for the seven blocks, to be drawn at noon on October 6. All blocks have sealed road frontages, with power, water and sewerage connections available.

Apparently a town in Tasmania tried a similar tactic recently offering houses to rent for $1.

The community of Levendale was inundated with emails and telephone calls from young families worldwide wanting to escape the rat-race and snare their slice of rural bliss. The traffic on the rural community's website, where people could register their interest in one of the vacant farmhouses being offered for a dollar, was so heavy that it crashed.

What other innovative approaches can we introduce to attract skill and labour to Tasmania?

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