The state government of Western Australia is training its attention on the possibility of more immigrant workers filling up the void of the worsening skill shortage in the area.

WA's Training and Workplace Development Minister Peter Collier said on Friday that he is mulling on ways to entice overseas workers to augment the state's skilled workers requirements.

Collier said that over the next decade, the WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry provided estimates that the shortage could balloon to over half a million workers and both the state authorities and business community agreed that opening the state to immigrant workers would solve the pressing issue.

As the state government's initial step in addressing the looming labour problem, Collier said that he has initiated discussions with Federal Immigration Minister Chris Bowen and signed a memorandum of agreement with him, paving the way for a joint effort by the two ministries to deal with the shortage.

The agreement, according to Collier, would ensure that "we have a much more targeted approach to skilled migration and we do ensure that we do open our doors to the international community that can work in areas of a special need in Western Australia."

With proper coordination, the federal government would be able to help the WA government in identifying the particular area of skill shortages and then supply the necessary labour supply, which would be sourced from immigrant workers.

The WA state government is projecting that the highly-anticipated mining boom would be hampered, at least region-wise, if the inflow of overseas workers would not be allowed, which Collier said could negatively impact on WA's growth prospect.

However, the state's opposition party scored the WA' government's new policy on solving the labour issue and blamed instead the authorities for their refusal to simply train the state's available workforce in lieu of the imported workers.

Opposition spokeswoman Ljiljanna Ravlich said that the state government's labour measures are essentially stop-gap approaches and ploys to veil its failure "to invest in training and could be using a soft cost option as a substitute for training Western Australians."