The foolishness of governments and unions buying votes by interfering in business can best be discerned by what happened in my own industry.

I am an electrician, and when I became an apprentice, wages were very low and apprenticeships easy to acquire. Every small company had more apprentices than tradesmen as they were considered cheap labour to do the more menial and repetitive tasks. Most employers took it for granted that the boys were not going to be of much use until they reached halfway through their second year of training. But that was alright because the low wages made it economic to hire them and time would sort out the winners from the losers.

This all changed with the election of the Whitlam government. The unions saw a chance to expand their union membership by supporting the case for much higher wages for young apprentices. This they hoped, would show young people the benefits of joining a union. The Labor government supported it because they wanted the youth vote.

Employers, especially the small contractors screamed that if youth wages were increased 200% then that would make apprentices uneconomic to hire. But the governments and unions refused to budge on their vote and membership buying idea. What happened was exactly what we are seeing today. First, the small contractors, who were the main ones who hired apprentices, stopped hiring them. Eventually, even the large companies stopped hiring apprentices.

Calls by the government for businesses to show some community spirit and hire young people at high wages fell on deaf ears. So, what did our stupid governments do then? What they always do when their stupid policies fail. They created a department to manage failure.

Suddenly we see the creation of quasi official "apprentice employment agencies" which hire apprentices out to business. These agencies only take the boys with the highest HSC marks. Apprentice numbers have subsequently fallen to below replacement of retiring members. Ain't socialism grand?

Nowadays we have a whole new problem to contend with when employing our youth, facebbok addiction.

In fact, out here in the QLD gas fields, it has been suggested that many young workers start their jobs, then chuck it in after a few rotations as they are not allowed to take their mobile phones with them when working in the industry. The phones are considered a potential ignition source.

Now these are people who are often earning three grand a week or more, because in this industry, age (18 plus) is usually not a barrier, as even first year apprentices can earn in excess of a $100K per year.

So paying them more in mainstream will make their worth even less valuable to future employers.

If only governments and unions would listen to industry experts.

Yes LEGO, so true, but there is another problem with apprentice training.

So many trades require a bit of math. Electrical requires quite a bit of math. Most of the kids, leaving school at 17 from senior high school today, have less math than the 15 year olds leaving junior high 20 years or more ago. This is a result of the feminisation of scientific subjects, to allow girls to handle them.

A friend of ours is now running remedial math classes at 2 TAFE colleges, where they were finding none of the electrical & even carpentry apprentices were finishing the courses. They all found the math too hard, & dropped out. Of the course my son started, only 1 of 9 actually qualified.

You can trot off to university, & get an environmental science degree, without enough math to pitch a roof.

Perhaps when brighter kids work out that many tradies today earn much more than arts graduates get flipping burgers, we may get some sense back into education.

Incidentally that defense force rout is a pretty good one. My son now has engineering qualifications, electrical tickets, diesel fitter tickets, power house tickets, & is one of the highest qualified welders in the country.

He is currently instructing officer cadets, & they send him off to courses in between intakes to keep him happy, he does get bored quickly.