"No Jeanette, you can't take one home to help around the house."
The Prime Minister, John Howard, has turned down the request of Pacific island leaders to let their citizens into Australia as seasonal workers.
Mr Howard has, however, offered to set up a new technical college in the South Pacific with funds from Australia's existing aid budget.
He made the offer at the Pacific Islands Forum retreat yesterday in Madang, Papua New Guinea, where the leaders approved the Pacific Plan, which is designed to establish greater co-operation and integration of struggling Pacific island nations.
He said the college would be located in "one of the more populous South Pacific countries" and would offer Australian trade qualifications in a number of areas including nursing and metalwork.
The qualifications would help young Pacific islanders find work in their own countries, but also in Australia, where there is a skills shortage, Mr Howard said.
Cynthia Banham Foreign Affairs Reporter in Madang, PNG
An influx of semi-skilled labour would be quite helpful in keeping our economy ticking over, of course it's not popular with the hard core of racists that both main parties pander to in order to win elections so we'll continue to beg Europeans to come over while wasting our aid by pouring it into corrupt breaucracies. We have jobs that need doing, they have people to do them, while they're here they'll spend some of their earnings here too, as well as sending most home to help their countrymen. And yes, practically all of them will go home, it would be ridiculously easy to ensure this, unless of course this is an admission of how truly incompetent Howard's immigration department is. But then, who wants to be known as the PM who let all the blacks in?
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