Prime Minister Anthony Albanese opened the national jobs summit on Thursday by announcing a $1.1bn “training blitz” to address the “urgent challenge” of workforce shortages. He also proposed reforms of workplace pay deal bargaining.
TAFE Ultimo, NSW
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"Urgent challenges": |
“I am very pleased to announce that yesterday at National Cabinet, we reached an agreement between the Commonwealth and every State and Territory Government to create an additional 180,000 fee-free TAFE places for 2023,” Albanese told the conference.
“In recognition of the urgent challenges facing our nation, we are taking action now – with a billion-dollar training blitz, driven by public TAFE.”
Employer groups welcomed the move. "Prime Minister Albanese's announcement at the Jobs and Skills Summit of an additional 180,000 fee-free TAFE places in 2023 is a welcome start to a much-needed training 'blitz'," said Innes Willox, CEO of national employer association Ai Group.
"The great challenge for TAFE will be building up its capacity to meet this increased demand while ensuring TAFEs are delivering the right skills that businesses need," Willox said. "The skills package will need to include efforts to improve completion rates for apprentices such as by reinstating completion incentives and increasing first year support to employers for all apprenticeships and traineeships."
The cost of the $1.1 billion package will be shared by the Commonwealth, the States and Territories.
“We want to see more Australians gaining the skills they need to find good jobs, in areas of national priority," said Albanese. "And I want this to be the beginning – not the end – of the progress that we see on skills and training over the next two days. Because it’s my great hope that this Jobs and Skills Summit marks the beginning of a new culture of co-operation.
“The Summit’s agenda reflects the challenges that the industries and businesses and people you represent are dealing with every day; Staff and skill shortages; Missing links in supply chains; Growing demand on our caring and community sector; An energy grid past its use by date; Structural barriers that deny women equality - in opportunity, in pay and in financial security; And the squeeze of stagnant wages and rising living costs. These challenges are significant – but more than that, they are urgent."
The Albanese government also proposed reforms to the enterprise bargaining system to allow deals that cover multiple employers without stopping businesses from dealing directly with their employees if they choose. “I think that workers need a wage increase,” Albanese later told ABC Radio. “And I think at the moment, the enterprise bargaining system isn't working to improve productivity, but it's also not working to improve wages.”
Ai Group said enterprise-based bargaining should remain "the cornerstone" of the workplace relations system.
“The announcement by Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke that the Government would legislate to enable multi-employer bargaining raises questions for employers concerned at the potential for the opening of a new front for disruptive and costly industrial action, potentially across a sector or broad parts of the economy,” said Willox.
“If we move down this path, it represents a fundamental shift in how bargaining operates and there needs to be complete transparency around how such a system would work in conjunction with single enterprise bargaining. Enterprise-based bargaining should remain the cornerstone of our workplace relations system to raise productivity, wages and the competitiveness of industry."
