Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is hoping to attract apprentices to the residential building sector by offering a 10-thousand-dollar payment to help meet new housing targets. The payment builds on existing incentives offered to apprentices in the clean energy sector. The head of the Apprenticeship Employment Network, Gary Workman, says any incentive for people to get into trades has the potential to address the country's skills shortages.
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00:00Skill shortages have been a problem in Australia for a long time, not just the construction
00:07sector, but all over the place.
00:10And I think COVID highlighted some of those really critical shortages that we have in
00:14things like health and retail and building construction.
00:18This announcement today is a really good step.
00:22It's not going to solve our problem in the short term.
00:25This was a pre-election promise.
00:27But I think long term, if we can provide more incentives and more reasons for young people
00:31to look at trade apprenticeships and other pathways outside of university, that will
00:37help with our skill shortages.
00:39But again, it's something that we've got to consistently do over the next four to five
00:42years. Completion rates have always hovered around 50, 55 percent.
00:46And the cost for a young person is always an issue when you're doing an apprenticeship
00:51in the first couple of years.
00:52So staggering those payments over five payments and having a completion payment is a bit of
00:59a financial incentive that may sort of attract and keep young people in their trade to get
01:03fully qualified. I think our system was designed to attract young people leaving secondary
01:08school or very early in their age progression in their career, like 16, 17, 18 year olds.
01:15And the wages in our IR system were designed to reflect that.
01:19In reality today, the average age of a starting apprentice is 22, 23 years of age.
01:24And for female apprentices, it's even a lot older.
01:27So they've got higher expenses, living costs.
01:31They've got more responsibilities when they're that age.
01:33So the wage incentives to help sort of understand and reflect those changes in the economy
01:40today, I think is a good step.
01:41Young people are questioning, what am I going to do for the next few years?
01:45I'd certainly like to see our secondary school systems provide more opportunity for young
01:51people to try careers and get real life work experience before they have to make a four
01:57year commitment to something, whether that's university or an apprenticeship.
02:01I think that's one of the reasons we're seeing really low completion rates in everything
02:05our youth does.
02:07I think they have a very narrow view of what the career pathways are, what does the job
02:13really look like?
02:14And I think we've got to spend more time giving young people an opportunity to explore that
02:19before they have to make a decision.