Many of the Cathay Pacific pilot group are highly disgruntled with their lot in life in Hong Kong at the moment, the airline has been tightening the thumb screws on them rather maliciously for years. All to do with CX management disasters with their fuel hedging gamble which they need to recoup from the pilots salary budget, but that's another story. The solution to the pilot shortage in Australia is simple, the Australian airlines should just offer the CX pilots the same money they are on in Hong Kong. Many of those are Aussies anyway, no need for a 457. Cathay Pacific would be happy to offload all those expensive expatriate pilots and replace them with cheap Asian pilots. The Asian carriers would be forced to up their own training program to cover their losses to CX; heck, change a few things at CASA and they might even send their cadets to Australia to do flight training. It's a win win for both the Australian Airline industry who get access to a large group of highly experienced and well trained pilots, and a win for GA flight training industry who pick up contracts or get a good price for selling their business to foreign interests.