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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-02-11 Daily Xml
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Apprentices and Trainees

The Hon. J.S. LEE (14:55): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Employment, Higher Education and Skills a question about skills shortages.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.S. LEE: Last month the Master Builders Association (MBA) raised concerns in regard to the looming shortages of skilled tradespeople—such as carpenters, bricklayers, concreters, plumbers, tilers and painters—in the past year. The building industry says that these shortages threaten to cost homeowners more and strangle South Australia's construction recovery. MBA Executive Director, Mr John Stokes, said that a failure to train enough new apprentices could create serious issues in the future, as South Australia may not have enough skilled workers to meet demand when construction picks up. For example, annual construction trade apprentice commencements dropped by more than 500 between 2010 and 2013. In addition to that figure, there were fewer than 1,000 young South Australians picking up a construction trade in 2013. My questions are:

1. With a number of leading stakeholders voicing their concerns, can the minister advise how the government will address this important issue of skill shortages?

2. With South Australia falling behind in its capacity to train enough new apprentices, what measures will the government introduce to bring back skilled workers to the construction trade?

3. As the skill shortages are threatening to cost homeowners more and more, what strategy will the minister put in place to ensure that South Australia's construction recovery will not be affected?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Employment, Higher Education and Skills, Minister for Science and Information Economy, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (14:57): I thank the honourable member for her most important question. Indeed, one of the responsibilities of government is to ensure that we liaise very closely with the business and industry sectors and ensure that their needs and demands are mapped onto our training providers so that we have a good balance between industry needs and skill outcomes.

One of the key planks in assisting the government in that task is our Training and Skills Commission. This was established as part of government, but works at arm's length from government. It puts together plans and has a five-year plan, but it reviews those almost annually. That work reflects the deliberations of the expert commission. We have an amazing group of people from different sectors on that commission as well as the detailed information that they gather from industry stakeholders. They have comprehensive networks with industries as well as higher education sectors.

The bulk of the commission's work is centred on the need to manage the capacity of the VET system in a sustainable way as well as to increase the quality outcomes of public investment in skills development. Obviously that is done with a backdrop of where the economy is changing, and they do that through a forecast set of economic priorities that the government sets for the state.

The commission's work is crafted following a very extensive consultation with industry and community stakeholders, as I have outlined. Most recently, they have broadened their stakeholder consultation through regional visits to Eyre Peninsula, Yorke Peninsula and the APY lands as well as through meetings with more than 300 different industry stakeholders, employers and training providers.

That work is very important. Our priority is to make sure that we are able to capture and understand what the trends and needs are now and forecast into the future, and to communicate that to the relevant stakeholders so that they can, in turn, use that in their planning for their vocational education and training.

That is the task that this government puts in place. There are, of course, a number of economic events that occur that affect the marketplace. We know that, at times, the construction industry in recent history has slowed somewhat and that, obviously, impacts on individuals' desire to want to enter those trades and the ability to find placements for those apprentices as well. The good news is that it appears to be improving somewhat and we hope that in the near future some of those trends will rectify themselves.

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