Just two tradies have been paid a cash incentive as a result of a $1.9 million campaign launched by the state government to attract more workers to Queensland.
The Tradies in Paradise initiative was launched in April and offered 1,000 interstate tradespeople up to $1,750 in cash bonuses to move to Queensland and work for eight weeks on flood recovery repairs.
Figures provided for budget estimates found 870 people had expressed interest in the program which runs until 30 November.
Of those expressions of interest, 12 people had applied for the program and two had been fully paid a total of $3,500 as at July 21.
In total the government had spent $1,965,569 on the campaign which included advertising, administration costs, and the incentive payments.
At an estimates hearing Employment and Small Business Minister Di Farmer conceded the uptake could be better.
"Would I like to see that there were more tradies actually applying for this program? Yes, I would," she said.
"The advertising campaign was run across other states except for New South Wales.
"We are very pleased that aside from anything else it has given us an opportunity to market Queensland and that is never a wasted opportunity."
Ms Farmer said the program was launched after consultation with stakeholders to address labour shortages in the wake of widespread flooding in south-east Queensland.
Opposition employment and small business spokesman Brent Mickelberg said most of the spend had been on advertising the "failed program", which he believed did not deliver for flood-affected Queenslanders.
"Two million dollars for two tradies," he said.
"It's great that they spent money advertising the program but the concept was ill-conceived from the start and we can see in the result it was ill-conceived.
"It just doesn't pass muster."
