When I became an apprentice electrician in 1969 when I was 17, apprenticeships were very easy to get, even for a over active, under achiever like myself. Apprentices were low paid, my first weekly wage was $16 dollars, equal today to around $160. Second year wages were only marginally better, but wage for a third year were round 66% of a skilled tradesman.

That did not bother me a bit. At least i had a job and a new profession which in later years would seem me set for life. And even the low wages I got constituted more money than I had ever had before. And as the son of a single mother it was the first time I had interacted with older males who could give me guidance.

Then the Whitlam Labor government socialists got into power and they buggered everything up.

The first thing they did was to buy the political loyalty of apprentices by forcing employers to pay apprentices more than double what they had earned previously. Not surprisingly, employers almost stopped hiring apprentices because they were now too expensive to employ. Their previous low wages reflected the fact that the kids were not much help for the first two years of their apprenticeships as they were not skilled and needed supervision.

With apprenticeships now hard to get, and employers insisting on recruiting school leavers with year 12 educations, a lot of boys who are in the same situation that I was once in can now not get apprenticeships. With even the stupid government bureaucrats now seeing an acute skills shortage because of their meddling, they hit upon another brilliant idea. Create government quangos as sort of apprentice body hire organizations. The boys were registered as apprentice workers and were body hired out. Naturally, these boys were only used for the most repetitive and unskilled jobs, and they got inferior training.

Memo to socialist idiots. Leave the free market alone. Stop meddling. If you want to do something about youth unemployment, go back to the old system that was working before you buggered everything up.

There is no significant problem in Australia which, if it was not created by the politicians, has not been made significantly worse by them.

This observation has certainly been proved by our government's trashing of jobs during the China virus. The silly Treasurer now bleating "jobs, jobs, jobs" needs to keep his nose out of things, and leave employment and the economy to the market. While our useless PM is doing nothing about anything, as usual, it would be a blessing if he kept out of this one too.

You ask how to bolster employment if Australia?

Simple: Cancel all the visas held by Chinese and send them packing.

And watch the WuFlu economic recession disappear overnight.

They take your jobs and buy up most of your property and all they can give you back is the WuFlu. Not what I call an investment in Australia's future.

Market!?

These are young humans, somebody's sons and daughters. Not cattle with a market value like we once attributed to owned slaves.

I did a partial apprenticeship. And where my cost of living had to be subsidised by my parents, during years one and two. Where I was supposed to match, the productive output and quality of tradesmen, for peanuts.

I finished, returned to school and the books. So I could avoid being legally mugged by an exploitive system that routinely, undervalues output and effort!

Sometimes under the blazing sun in heatwave conditions. While the master slave drver rides round in air conditioned comfort demanding greater and greater effort and production.

Many of these workers are disabled and unemployable by their mid-forties! Thrown on the scrapheap and traded for a newer model!

If you don't want to pay our young folk a living wage for productive work, then we need to address a few things that contribute to, cost of living related, wage demands.

Starting with the obscene cost of very basic housing and the price-gouged cost of energy/transport. And ending with the outlawing of commissions and paper shuffling, profit demanding middlemen/robber barons! The latter virtually doubling the cost of living/doing business!

Trades need to be taught at school, so those seeking work are job ready. And some professions can be learned as employed cadets, also doing night school. This is where the recently retired come into their own!

Automation will make many trades and professions obsolete inside a decade. Even so, we need to understand one hard truth for business. And that is, automate or perish! Or morph the enterprise into a partially owned co-op! Or both!

We also need to reinvoke conscription and where young folk are hardened up a little, taught some self-reliance, gain a teamwork ethic and self-esteem. And where asinine, insane, (greed is good) individualistic aspirational brainwashing can be expertly trained out of them!

After all, be it a pandemic or climate change, we are all in this together! And need be guided by the experts and the science!
Alan B.

Great to read an article by someone who actually understands that a business can only employ people if those people actually earn the business more than they cost the business.

He doesn't mention just how much more than their wage an employee costs any business. By the time all the add on costs are included an employee costs a minimum of 150% of their wage.

So many new businessmen have had to learn the hard way, that a thriving business, expanding it's sales, & increasing it's workforce is often making considerably less profit than when a much smaller outfit.

It is also nice to find someone who understands that governments don't create real jobs, it is entrepreneurs who create real jobs. Governments create sheltered workshops, like the public service, that employ 5 times as many people to do a job as necessary, & that is in so many cases, something that doesn't require doing anyway. All governments can do to create jobs is set a scene that allows private enterprise to get on with creating wealth. Without wealth creation there can be no new jobs.

The much praised infrastructure projects should be mostly dumped. Cross river rail here in Brisbane is not only an expensive waste, it will lead to even more loss making rail journeys. A loss/loss plan if ever there was one. What government should be doing is encouraging a dismantling of city centers, to eliminate the need for thousands to travel to them in future.

Phil,

You have yet to let me know what planes you flew when you were in the navy and the aircraft carrier you served on.

I knew we once had an aircraft carrier but I was unaware it came with planes. I always thought the Melbourne was just a troop carrier, apart from being a destroyer destroyer that is.