Australia has an immediate need for 200,000 skilled workers (conservative estimate) in the trades (tradies). For far too long Australian employers and governments have neglected basic skills training through the apprenticeship system. The trades were always the poor relation when it came to the development of skilled workers. Australia preferred to focus on university and collage qualifications, which are also important, but should not be to the detriment of the practical trades, they to are vital in any workforce for national development. A heavy reliance on skilled immigrants as an easier and cheaper way of obtaining tradespeople is no longer viable on its own. Covid and restricted immigration has shown that to be true.

The Morrison government announced yesterday $365 million to support an extra 35,000 trade apprenticeships, is welcome news. A lot more is needed if Australia is going to have any chance of meeting its future needs for skilled trade workers through the home grown apprenticeship system, combined with some skilled migration.

Again, blaming Govt for what unions & their greedy members have created !

Indy, you have never experienced gainful employment in your life, so say yourself, still living off government welfare. To simply spout your philosophical ignorance about unions is typical. In my 20 years working directly in manufacturing industry I can say it was the unions that insisted apprentices be employed and trained, when many employers were against such things.

Dear paul1450,

I have a Vietnamese friend who came out as a refugee. He is a trained doctor but has worked night shift in a meat production and packaging plant for 8 years as a labourer in Australia.

I caught up with him a few weeks ago. His brother in law is coming out with his family as a skilled migrant. In Vietnam he is an engineer in a factory producing tech items.

He is coming out to take up a abattoir worker position in FNQ. His skills? 6 weeks training at the migration firm's "school" and a certificate. The cost to him and his family for the entire package is over $200,000 Australian dollars.

So what is in it for him? A virtually assured pathway to Australian citizenship.

What is in it for the company in Australia? They get a tied and very compliant worker for 5 years. They also enjoy lower taxes because they do not have to contribute to the education of the worker that they would if he were Australian.

The return to skilled migration rates will of course drive up unemployment in Australia and keep wages growth stagnant. As Mathias Cormann said low wage growth is a 'deliberate design feature of our economic architecture'.

It really is a scam perpetrated by the likes of Gina to the detriment of many ordinary Australians.

individual,
It was not the workers and unionists that shut Cockatoo Island Dockyard but the Labor Government in Canberra. They canceled the lease on the island thus effectively shutting the company down; and put 4,800 people out of work and killed one of the country’s finest apprentice training programmes.
The tenders were open for the building of the Collins class submarines and Cockatoo were specifically banned from tendering even though the Company was world renowned for its work on submarines and had successfully repaired and maintained Australia’s subs for decades.
Submarine repair was transferred to Western Australia as a boost to Kim Beasleys electoral chances.

it was always the unions that caused disruption & loss of jobs just to pander to their greedy & mostly unproductive members who rode on the blue collar workers' backs.
The blue collar workers hardly ever received wages reflecting their effort. The white collar crowd who became the middle class courtesy of unions gained the most for the least effort.
Even now during the pandemic & devastating floods, some are already vying for salary increases. What they should go for are salary reduction to make workers wages more equal.