The object in earth orbit makes a few interesting points here. Whilst retaining my claim as always to be completely uninformed on almost everything, I have taken the liberty to read through the "sponsoring a temporary overseas worker to Australia" book and it makes me wonder just how they did it (not that I will lose any sleep over it mind you, not my business). Obviously Bristow's have done it, perhaps by relying on the regional employment concessions (Karratha is a regional area isn't it??), assisted also perhaps by a few porkie pies (for the benefit of our English friends reading here, the porkie pies referred to are not of the edible kind). Point being, if you can't find suitably qualified helicopter pilots in Karratha, you can import them from overseas as long as you pay them the same (or more than) Australian pilots. That's my reading of it in a nutshell.
No doubt AFAP are watching this closely, but if it's going ahead, and it is, (and as it has in the past) then I reckon there's not much more AFAP can/will do about it (they never really recovered any industrial might following the 80's pilot's strike). Unless of course it comes to light that there are qualified Australian pilots available yet being overlooked, or even under-done qualified Australian pilots who can be trained to do the job. So if anyone has been overlooked at Bristow, do the Australian thing and gripe about it!!
Don't Bristows have any SFO's to bump up to Command, replace those SFO's with new hire FO's sourced from GA? That's how it should work. The pilots are definitely out there, the flying schools are churning them out by the dozen. Bump up the SFO's to meet vacancies, and invest in a training pipeline to replace them with FO's. The need to provide an adequate training pipeline far exceeds any need to hire foreign workers. But if you are a foreigner working here on $800+ per day, welcome, and good on you. Take as much of it as you can get and we'll live in a cockpit of international matrimonial harmony. Just don't criticize the coldness of our beer
