How can Australians be the happiest with the most dangerous creatures on Earth plaguing their tiny desert island? I wouldn't go near that spider infested rock. 

Well tetleytea, that is an interesting perspective.  Thanks.   What would you say if there are two equally skilled workers, one is local, one isn't?   That's the only caveat I'd have with no discrimination.

shutup and eat a meatpie.

One mans plague is another mans Home Defense.

 The little buggers appear to be doing their job.

They are happy because one of their hobbies is shark fishing. I'm sure a friendy and happy Australian would be willing to give you a demo...

LOL, Fuzzy. You shouldn't bait the poor sharks that way.

Politicians will always enact laws favouring the people that can vote in the next election (i.e. the locals).  Any politician who advocates putting foreign workers (i.e. non-voters) on an equal footing will quickly find themselves out of a job.  Right or wrong, it's the reality.

It's true:  I mean, how can you beat up your local senator because the receiving country is resisting receiving you?  You have to beat up the other country's parliament.   Well, you can't do that either...you're a foreigner.   The only way to make it work is to drive a reciprocity agreement, and now you're trying to drive TWO countries to do something you want.  Good luck with that. 

All skills being equal, naturally an employer would tend to want the local first, for a few reasons:  you can get an earlier starting date from the local guy, less risk, and usually the employer would be picking up relocation expenses.  And then you get the chicken-and-the-egg problem I'm hitting:  the employer doesn't want to deal with all the legal immigration issues.  Which I'm saying I wish we didn't have legal immigration issues....   But if you're in a situaton where all this doesn't really apply (such as I'm already there; I'm just a foreigner who's already there), personally I would pick the foreign worker because i want the diverse mindset.  I want to form a multicultural team who think very differently from one another. 

Excuse me! Tiny?  In landmass, Australia equals mainland USA.

Furthermore!  Not only is it an island... it is also a continent.

Which reminds me!  If the USA is stuck in between Canada and Mexico, does that make it incontinent?

Oh, and Sean, don't worry about our dangerous creatures.  Chances are, you'd never see one.

But then, that's how a lot of tourists end up on the menu.

Yeah, and I resent foreigners criticising our choice of pets.  Like they know the troubles we have keeping alive pets imported from overseas.  They don't acclimatise too well, so naturally we turn to the native fauna for our 4, 6, 8-legged companions.

Not too well, it seems... we still get 1000's of tourist turning up here every day.  I suppose the big bonus to that is that it helps keep the pet food bills down.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work anymore.  After several game fishing boat collisions, tourists are now required to wear seat belts and they fall overboard not nearly as often.

I'm afraid that the import of workers into Australia has little to do with getting the right person for the job, but more to get the right person for the price. We have some of the best wage and conditions for workers in the world. The mining elite have been arguing to import workers to break the unions and to keep prices and conditions down.

They won't put in programs to train people for positions, they want the government to put the time and money in it. They get huge tax breaks and funding so they will continue to grow, at the cost the voters and a cause of inflation. And now Gina get to import cheaper workers so she can maximize profits ... something she has been pushing well before the mining boom.

Next thing you know the Australian government will let her use nukes for mining, another thing she would like to do 

What!!! ... there goes the best bait for sharks 

but then the crocs do go and get their own out of the boats with the pet food that is seat-belted, and even occasionally they have  sunk boats to get the pet food out of the boats.

but the crocs do check out the boats to see if there are any aussies on them, and if there is, then they leave that boat alone ( I think that they look for the battered akubra hats, and if they do not see any then they know it is safe to eat that boat load)

harpo

...seems somebody forgot to tell Julia....    just when you thought they couldn't get more pitiful....    

link...

seanw3's appalling misunderstanding of geography aside, he does have a point:  The animals in your country are frickin' scary! 

Yes, your women are both attractive and promiscuous (a most excellent combination), but I don't think even that can make up for the fact that most non-sapient creatures down there constantly try to kill you.  I much prefer countries where the spiders aren't the size of pickup trucks and slavering venom...