Many of the Emirates pilots group are highly disgruntled with their lot in life in Dubai at the moment, the airline has been tightening the thumb screws on them rather maliciously for years. All to do with EK management disasters with their purchase of too many A380s 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 EK pilots the same money they are on in Dubai plus another 50%. Many of those are Aussies anyway, no need for a 457. Emirates would be happy to offload all those expensive expatriate pilots and replace them with more cheap pilots from the capital. The Asian carriers would be forced to up their own training program to cover their losses to EK; 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