An anonymous Crikey reader wrote the letter below and informed Crikey that they will be sending it to the Department of Immigration. Our reader studied in Perth.
I’ve been forced to make this decision. I am giving up on Australia. I came over hoping to get a good education, work hard and learn the trade, become a resident and contribute to the hospitality business. But I can’t stay any longer.
Unlike me, many are staying. Not because their expectations towards their training provider have been met (after all, they weren’t expecting anything), or because they are here to fulfil Australia’s demand for cooks/chefs. They are staying because there is no need to work hard and learn the trade to get the permanent residency.
As a matter of fact, most of them don’t even bother working in the trade. Apparently, working as gas station attendants, security guards and fast-food workers is a lot better than working in a hot, fast-paced commercial kitchen. And perhaps their bosses don’t even know their employees are restricted to 20 hours of work per week as their visas state.
So why should they bother? Immigration doesn’t. Their employers don’t. Their school doesn’t.
The hospitality industry’s demand for cooks and chefs is never going to end, as far as I can see it. Not the way the whole international student education and migration system works. At the school I attended, training was pathetic. To the point I arrived at my “Select and prepare seafood” class and was presented with a can of tuna. Yes, it was a joke from my lecturer, because the school didn’t provide any proper seafood for that class. Eventually we got a couple of spoiled fish, an expired box of frozen mussels and a few rotten prawns.
“Dear Students, this is how your seafood must NOT look and smell like.”
But that just showed us how much the school cared. “Select and prepare game”? Some students now know people can actually eat meat other than chicken, pork and beef. Some.
By the way, I am still to see any reason behind the idea of putting inexperienced hospitality workers, that just finished a cookery certificate (and some have never stepped into a commercial kitchen outside school), and try to teach them management subjects. Might as well teach a first year’s medical school student how to perform brain surgery.
Why not provide international students the opportunity to go through a proper chef apprenticeship? Personally, I would love to do it. But I can’t. Or perhaps establish a proper cookery course for international students, that would last two years and that would be properly monitored by DIAC, with proper student assessments and a proper trade recognition scheme, that doesn’t provide some students the opportunity to pay a few thousand dollars for a letter that states they have 900 hours of work experience as a cook/chef.
Anyways, it must be of Australia’s biggest interest, somehow, to have inexperienced and poorly trained cooks getting permanent residency and working as security guards or as McDonald’s attendants.
Again, the way things are, students are still going to copy each other’s work at school and submit them whenever they feel like. They are still not going to show up for class on Mondays. They are still going to show up one hour late on the other days of the week. They are still going to work more than 20 hours per week. They are still going to get permanent residency, work at Hungry Jacks, send money back to their country and bring their family along three years later. They are still going to remain quiet, hoping nothing changes. Hoping DIAC, TRA, Department of Education and Perth Institute WA keep doing what they are doing.
But I am going. I am going away, and try to get my thousands of dollars back somewhere else. Do what I came for: actually becoming a chef.
Gee no mention of the permanent residency being the reason you came. You actually came to become a chef? A chef in six months training perhaps? Pull the other one.
As somebody who has worked minimum wage all my life in the country of my birth I say how much of this your fault? Go with the blessing of people who cannot afford up front education. It is Australias biggest interest to look after the people who want to be here. This is not you.
That is if you are a real person and not just Crikey’s interns playing dog whistle again. I cannot understand why the student is anonymous if they have not named their school. If you are a real person then place your name on your whinge.
Dear Anonymous.
Your rant is confused. And I’m sorry that you are leaving. But I note that there are people (also untrained chefs) currently on leaky boats desparate to get into Australia.
What is it that you want exactly? Are you saying that immigrants who work at Hungry Jacks should never get permanent residency? Should never get to bring their families to Australia?
And are you saying that the Government should take over all college and/or chef courses? Are you saying that chefs should be placed in the same bucket as professions with actual real shortages (nurses etc.)?
In summary, please provide evidence that there really is a global untrained chef shortage.
Dear Angus
Yes, anonymous is confused in the rant but a lot of what s/he is complaining about is very, sadly, true. I read into the letter not the loss of a chance at PR, and not the loss of a job but at the loss of an education that s/he believed they would get and which they paid for.
I work in a NSW RTO and see first hand every day the students cheating, copying each other’s work, trying to muscle in on the few students who actually hand in real assignments, and giving the trainers a lot of grief over the plagiarised assignments. Students who actually challenge the trainers about their competence to read the so-called assignments.
I agree with anonymous that it is DIAC and institutions like VETAB who are 100% to blame. They know there are a lot of dodgy colleges (I cannot call them schools) who have enrolments at 300% of the approved capacity and they don’t do enough, quickly enough to challenge these cowboys of the international education scene.
To directly question anonymous is really missing the point of the letter. It was the government, not anonymous, who put chef/cook on the Skilled Migration list of occupations (and who also recently removed it, and has begun a long, slow, crackdown on cooking colleges with the state accrediting authorities).
If the Federal government can suggest they take over the health system, then they can also take over the accreditation of international education institutions – much like they did with universities. I hope they do because, god knows, the NSW government and VETAB are useless.
Thanks @S Logan.
Given your position, I think that you should email the above to Crikey, or submit an article yourself. You eloquently put what Anonymous did not.
We run a small cooking school in Sydney. We teach basic cooking skills at Cooking for Blokes.
Too often we receive email requests from “International” students wanting to be signed off on skills they have not learned at accredited cooking colleges. How on earth can anyone attain a certificate IV in hospitality and not know basic methods such as blanching and refreshing?
The system is a disgrace and allows lowers standards, poor self esteem for the students and damages Australia’s international reputation.