SUCCESSIVE FEDERAL AND STATE GOVERNMENTS’ FAILURE

TO PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE LEADS TO

APPRENTICESHIP DROUGHT

The skills shortage has finally struck one of Australia’s largest builders, Australand, who believe they will have to generate their own tradespeople for the upcoming generation.

Faced with official forecasts of 195,000 shortfall in skilled workers nationally within 4 years, Australand hopes to increase the number of its apprentices to more than 100 by that time.  This is a sad indictment on elected members of successive Governments, Federal and State, that exposes their weaknesses in preparing future infrastructure to ensure our youth have the opportunity to have an apprenticeship.  We have discovered a lot of these problems arise within the major political parties due to internal disputes which often leads to branch-stacking.  This proves that the party system has created a priority for the welfare of their party in preference to working for the benefit of the Australian Community.  Because of this, Australand will have to dump the contemporary practice of drawing apprentices from professional labour hire companies, depending on need.

Australand’s apprenticeship manager, Brian Moss, said the construction skills shortage became serious because companies did not see it as their responsibility to train apprentices.  “We started our scheme this year (2005) with 13 apprentices because we were acutely aware of shortages.”  Australand’s Residential Division General Manager, Peter Burke, said the strategy aimed to build loyalty so tradespeople stayed with the company after completing their apprenticeship.  Getting apprentices to complete their training is a hurdle for skills replenishment.  About 40% do not finish, and the number in training has fallen by approximately 20,000 to 390,000 since 2003.  The Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group, Heather Ridout, said there had been no bigger economic issue in recent years than building skills.  The establishment of an Institute of Trade Skills Excellence, with a $23 million contribution from the Federal Government would ease the strain, she said.  Ms. Ridout is the same person who, with the backing of her executive, “got into bed with John Howard and his Government” to espouse how the U.S.-Australia-Free Trade Agreement will benefit Australia  -  ignoring the fact that the lopsided Agreement in favour of the United States will allow them to import goods into our Country at a ratio of more than two to one.  Link >>>> UPDATE – AUGUST 2005.

Phillip Toner of the University of Western Sydney has calculated that growth in apprenticeship numbers, akin to tradespeople, must continue for 10 years to compensate for a decade of under-investment in training.  He said the privatization or corporatisation of public utilities, traditionally training providers, had contributed to the fall-off in training.  Other factors were competition from imports, pressure to cut costs, increased reliance on labour hire and the expansion of tertiary education.