Minister to undertake Perth engagements

Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce travels to Perth today for a short series of engagements.

This weekend sees Perth hosting the first of four New Zealand job fairs in Australia targeting some emerging skills shortages in New Zealand, particularly in the fields of construction trades, engineering, and computer software and design.  Mr Joyce will attend the job fair tomorrow.

“We have a growing economy that is set to create more than 50,000 skilled jobs over the next couple of years,” Mr Joyce says.

“For many people, Australia and New Zealand are becoming one labour market. We’ve donated lots of our people to work over there in the last 20 years. Now with our economy doing better, it’s time to encourage more people to consider moving back the other way.”

While in Perth, Mr Joyce will also meet with oil and gas industry representatives, officials from Newmont Mining - the third largest gold producer in the world - and scientists working on the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project. The SKA radio telescope will be the largest scientific instrument on Earth, both in terms of physical scale and the volume of data it will generate.

Mr Joyce will return to New Zealand on Monday morning.