Brisbane St Patrick’s Day Parade 2011

Photography by Jim O’Reilly

Dennis McAuliffe from Clare, John Joe Hartnett from Kerry and Pádraic Dooley from Offaly.

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Last year's St Patrick's Day parade in Brisbane was a great success. (File pic)

Exactly two months to the day since flood waters first hit the streets of Brisbane, the city is set to become awash in a sea of green on March 12. Brisbane’s Irish club, which organises the event, is hoping that this year’s parade will be bigger than ever, and raise the spirits of Queenslanders following the devastation of recent months.

“Although the flood recovery continues for many families, the parade will give everyone a chance to let their hair down after a couple of tough months,” says Queensland Irish Association President Eamon Gaffney.

“Since the floods hit Brisbane on 12 January this year, the city hasn’t had a great deal to smile about as the destruction and devastation the flood waters left behind have been heartbreaking.

“Many members of the Brisbane Irish community were hit hard by the floods, we have families who have lost everything but they are coming along to entertain the crowds and have some fun.”

Despite a 40 per cent cut in state government funding from $40,000 to $25,000 this year, the Irish Club’s Event Manager Susan McAndrew says preparations are coming along well.

“We did have to cut some corners in terms of advertising and promoting the parade, but it’s nothing anyone will notice on the day,” she told the Irish Echo.

A number of Brisbane based Irish companies have also agreed to sponsor the parade this year, giving a welcome boost to the coffers.

“As soon as these Irish businessmen heard about the funding concerns, they put their names forward for sponsorship to make sure the parade happened this year.”

The event, which is in its 22 year, costs around $70,000 to organise. Money is usually spent on road closures in the CBD, barricading, permit fees, policing and any other small payments to performers. The main sponsors are the Queensland Premier’s Office and Brisbane City Council, as well as corporate sponsors including Channel 7. The Irish Club’s Susan McAndrews says there simply wasn’t as much funding available this year.

“We understand with the floods and everything that they have to spread it around.”

The club missed the boat to apply for funding through the Multicultural Assistance Program (MAP) this year, but plans to do so next year. It has also applied to the Irish government under the Irish Emigrant Fund for 2011/2012.

Last year’s St Patrick’s Day parade saw a turnout of around 40,000 people, and organisers are hoping for more of the same this year, weather dependent.

“In 2010 there were 846 participants in the parade itself, but we already have 854 lined up for this year and expect the number to rise. There has also been an increase in inquiries at the front desk as to the times and the route,” says Ms McAndrews.

The Irish Club is keen to create a family atmosphere for this year’s parade, and has organised an Irish fair for when the march is over. This will include stalls selling imported Irish food, Irish traditional music and dance, as well as an area for children with a bouncing castle, clowns and other entertainment. Festivities will also continue at the Irish Club on Elizabeth Street, with live bands playing up until midnight.

The Brisbane St Patrick’s Day Parade kicks off at 10:30am from the corner of Elizabeth and George streets proceeding down Elizabeth Street, Edward Street and Alice Street.

The parade will finish in George Street outside Parliament House and QUT where the festivities will kick on with an Irish Fair offering food and free family entertainment until 2pm.

Motorists can expect road closures from 10:15am until midday. Retailers are urged to consider these delays and plan alternative routes to work if necessary.

Visit www.queenslandirish.com for more details.

By Claire McGreal

The Queensland Premier’s Office has cut funding for Brisbane’s St Patrick’s Day parade by almost 40 per cent, leaving organisers in a dash to raise funds.

The Brisbane parade is organised by the city’s Irish Club. The 2010 parade brought 50,000 people to the city’s CBD and this year’s event will be the 22nd. The event is funded by Brisbane City Council, the Queensland Premier’s Office and by corporate sponsors.

It costs around $70,000 to organise. The funding is generally spent on road closures in Brisbane CBD, barricading, permit fees, policing resources and nominal payments to a small number of performing bands.

The parade’s organisers learned last month that the Queensland Premier’s Office could not provide as much funding as it has in previous years.

“I received a letter saying that they would be supporting the parade this year but that they just could not allocate as much funding,” said Susan McAndrew, of the Irish Club in Brisbane.

“I spoke to a representative from the Premier’s Office and she said they would be committed to meeting with us in April and putting a plan in place for next year’s parade,” said McAndrew.

The Premier’s Office has confirmed the reduced funding.

“Last year the Queensland Government offered $40,000. The parade has received a total of $215,000 (excluding GST) in cash sponsorship since 2004,” said a spokesperson from the Department of the Queensland Premier and Cabinet.

“[This year] $25,000 excluding GST was offered for the 2011 parade from the Queensland Government. The Queensland Government has sought to help parade organisers find alternate funding sources for the parade, for example in funding through the Multicultural Assistance Program (MAP) or corporate sponsorship.

“Unfortunately the association did not apply to the MAP for the 2011 parade and has been unsuccessful in attaining corporate sponsorship.”

“The Queensland Government recognises the importance of the St Patrick’s Day parade to Brisbane’s Irish community and that is why $25,000 has been contributed this year. We will continue to work with the association to help them seek complementary sources of funding for future parades,” added the spokesperson.

The Irish Club is assuring participants that this year’s parade will go ahead, though some corners will need to be cut. The organisers are hoping that Irish-owned businesses in Brisbane can help to raise an additional $17,000. A Brisbane City Council spokesperson said their funding allocation would go ahead as outlined in the council’s current budget.

by Luke O’Neill

A 25-year-old Dublin woman has been convicted of raping another woman in the toilets of a popular Brisbane nightspot last year.

Anne Marie O’Loughlin, who was working as a registered nurse in Brisbane at the time, was convicted of two counts of rape and the deprivation of liberty of a 34-year-old local woman at the Caxton Hotel, near the CBD, in the early hours of November 29 2009.

She had denied all charges against her, including one charge of sexual assault, of which she was acquitted.

The five-day trial heard that Ms O’Loughlin and the victim had kissed for three minutes in a toilet cubicle, but that the victim did not consent to digital penetration.

The court also heard Ms O’Loughlin claim that while she couldn’t remember kissing the woman it was possible, but that it was out of character for her to do anything else without the other woman’s consent.

She is said to have openly sobbed when the jury delivered their verdict after 13 hours of deliberation on Friday afternoon.

The Irish Echo understands that Ms O’Loughlin had been held in Australia on a Criminal Justice visa, and would have flown home to Ireland on Monday had she been acquitted.

According to the Courier Mail, Ms O’Loughlin has been remanded in custody for the preparation of a psychological report at the request of her lawyer, and is not likely to be sentenced until after Christmas.

by Claire McGreal

Corkman Derek Irwin has opened his own recruitment business in Brisbane.

by Pádraig Collins

QUEENSLAND is once again proving to be a fertile jobs market after a recent boost in economic activity there.
Though unemployment in the sunshine state is still slightly above the national average, it is heading in the right direction and dropped from 6.3 to six per cent in October.

Cavanman Micheal Brides, 23, first arrived in Brisbane last February.

“I was staying with mates from Ireland, but I couldn’t find work in Brisbane. I had to go down to Victoria to get work in fruit picking,” he told the Irish Echo.

His regional work meant he had no trouble securing a second working holiday visa. Before recently moving back to Queensland Mr Brides took out an ad on the gumtree website saying he was “looking for plumbing work or any type of construction work”.

To his delight he got an immediate response.

“I got a job out of it. In fact I got five or six phone calls from people offering work,” he said.

Though he is a qualified plumber, it was his previous experience in welding which led to him getting a job in a factory in Brisbane.

“The jobs situation in Queensland has definitely picked up from where it was last February. There is a lot more chance of getting a job here now,” he said.

Corkman Derek Irwin recently opened the first privately owned Irish recruitment agency in Australia – Kingsley Recruitment.

With offices in both Brisbane and Cork, Mr Irwin specialises in bringing medical staff to Australia.

He has seen a recent pick-up in the Queensland economy.

“It’s a phased improvement. We are seeing a lot of people whose days had been reduced moving back to five day weeks again. Once people are back working full time again the economy will really pick up next year,” he said.

“There are opportunities for growth in many areas at the moment, but it’s not quite at a WA level yet, where they are beginning to have skills shortages again.”

Mr Irwin says there are lots of opportunities for nurses in Queensland at the moment.

“Irish nurses have a fantastic track record here. The Irish culture is a caring culture and the discipline of Irish nurses is renowned,” he said.

“We are bringing a lot of Irish nurses to Australia on permanent contracts.

“This puts us in competition with the agency model, but it offers more stability to the employer.”

Having just moved to Australia with his wife and four children 
(aged five to 16) in September, Mr Irwin knows that moving can be stressful.

“We provide accommodation and help people with things like banking. I can empathise with people coming over.

“The first three or four weeks are the most challenging part,” he said.

Dubliner Richard Gernon, his wife Suzanne and their son Josh (they’ve since had another son, Jayden) moved to Brisbane last year and have no regrets.

Mr Gernon found work within a few weeks of arrival and is now a Commonwealth Bank manager.

“I found recruitment agents difficult to deal with so I thought the best way to do it was directly. I literally knocked on doors,” he said.

One of those doors was his local Commonwealth Bank branch.

“I took my CV with me and basically just had an informal chat. This worked for me as it showed initiative which I think a lot of the companies over here are looking for,” he said.

“Getting work in general is about yourself rather than your qualifications. It’s all about confidence and building relationships.”

Mr Gernon has noticed an upturn in the economy.

“I do a lot of business with real estate agents and have seen the housing market improving. There is more home lending, which is usually a good indicator of what’s going on in the economy.”

He encourages others to take his example and knock on doors.

“We’re always trying to recruit in the bank,” said Mr Gernon.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is in no doubt that the Federal Government’s $42bn stimulus package has benefited Queensland.

He says there “is a deep sense that people know that absent the stimulus there would have been tens of thousands more Queenslanders out of work”.

Treasury calculations say that 200,000 more Australians would have been out of work without the stimulus strategy.

“You are talking about 40,000–50,000 Queenslanders who would have lost their jobs were it not for the national stimulus strategy,” said Mr Rudd.

The PM said his home state appreciates what the Government has done. “They have a pretty deep sense, were it not for what we’ve done, that Queensland would be in the depths of a fundamentally deep and sustained recession with huge consequences for unemployment, which would take a long time to recover from,” he said.

It has seen its fair share of ups and downs in recent years, with the dotcom crash of 2000 and the subsequent boom period, but while other industries are cutting costs and freezing recruitment, the IT sector is currently looking relatively healthy for 2009.

Times are by no means easy, but the demand is still present for software developers, in particular, in most of the major cities. Word on the ground is that those who are highly skilled, flexible and prepared to negotiate on salary should find employment without too much difficulty.

Last week’s Hays Recruitment Quarterly Report on IT found that recruitment in the industry is still ongoing in many sectors and that highly skilled technical candidates remain in demand. Large government-funded projects such as the Australian National Broadband Network will require a significant number of skilled workers and even the private sector is still recruiting – albeit at a slightly slower pace.

According to Peter Noblet of Hays Recruitment, contractors are currently much more in demand than those seeking permanent positions.

 “We’re seeing a lot more contract roles coming up as companies become that bit more circumspect about their recruitment policies,” he told the Irish Echo. “A contractor is more flexible than a permanent worker and with everything that is going on in the economy at the moment, that is what most employers are looking for.

“There is still a shortage of skilled workers in many areas of development, such as Dot.Net, Voiceover IP, Java and J2EE. But the right experience, knowledge and business acumen is essential. Average workers will struggle.”

Finding a job depends on where you’re living as well as your skill set. Sydney, the traditional hub of IT activity, has seen a distinct slowdown, but still has by far the most positions available. Brisbane is suffering slightly due to the mining industry slowdown, but is still relatively buoyant, according to recruiters.

By contrast, Melbourne has seen a dramatic downturn, according to the general manager of Finite IT Recruitment Solutions, Duncan Thomson. As a result, many workers are investigating a move to Canberra, which is seeing a surge in job opportunities in the IT sector.

“Melbourne is a tough market for IT at the moment,” Thomson told the Irish Echo. “I would say it is one of the toughest markets in Australia.”

Finite IT have seen the number of applications for jobs around Australia double in the last nine months, he added.

“We are now getting double the volume of response to each ad we place,” he said. “I think on reflection it’s a lot tougher out there than it was this time last year…The market is an awful lot slower. But things are still looking optimistic for the year ahead. There is always demand for good quality IT professionals.”

When software developer Stephen Price, 31, from Dublin, arrived in Sydney in January 2007, he had a range of job offers to choose from. Having acquired residency through his skilled occupation, Price found jobs in both contract and permanent positions were plentiful.

“When I arrived in Sydney, it was in the middle of an IT boom and there were more jobs available than people to fill them,” he told the Irish Echo. “I actually had a choice between four different jobs around the city and I found that, as a contractor, the money was better in Australia than Ireland.”

However, as the economy worsened at the end of last year, Price was let go from his company and found himself searching for work at the worst possible time of year.

 “There are still jobs out there but these days there are more people looking and less jobs available,” he said. “I was lucky enough to get a good role at a good rate, but the other jobs I was in the running for were not positions I would be interested in when times are good. I think IT professionals who are on Working Holiday Visas or are looking for sponsorship might struggle to get work in the current market.”

 Aidan McGowran, 26, from Dublin, was also searching for work in Sydney last month and found his Working Holiday Visa was a distinct disadvantage in the eyes of recruiters. Despite this, he found it much easier to secure a job than he had initially feared.

“I thought it would be tough to find employment during December and January, which are traditionally very slow months for recruitment in Australia, and I doubted the recession would make things easier,” he said. “But there seemed to be a decent number of jobs available, although the rates on offer were slightly lower than previously.”

As the markets in Europe and the US continue to slide, it is inevitable that more IT professionals are going to descend Down Under. Recruiters are already seeing a surge in Australians returning from overseas in search of work, and there has been an increase in the numbers of people overseas applying for skilled migration visas.

 “There are certainly more and more candidates looking for work,” Noblet said. “But this is no Dot.Com crash. I still think the jobs market will be pretty good in the first quarter of 2009.”

by Isabel Hayes