More special pleading from the Australian Industry Group:
The federal opposition was fast out of the blocks this week with a major education and training policy announcement, but our severe and growing skills shortages and labour mismatches should be beyond partisan politics.
The federal government has invested hugely in skilling in recent years as well.
What is needed is for all sides of politics to go on a war footing to tackle what is one of the biggest barriers to our COVID economic recovery and to the resumption of real income growth.
Australia, like many other developed economies, is experiencing severe skill shortages. There are shortages across the economy and geography. There is no silver bullet.
At an Ai Group member forum in July, 60 per cent of businesses reported entrenched skill shortages with acute shortages of workers with skills that require lengthy training and development. Looking to the future, 73 per cent of Australian CEOs indicated in our recent survey that they expect to have difficulty finding and retaining skilled labour next year.
And? That offers no context. Unemployment is above 5%. There are NO wage pressures:
Job ads are strong but exaggerated owing to the great resignation.
The AIG demands that both local training and the importation of foreign slaves migrants ramps up but we all know what that means. More of the latter and less of the former leading to declining wages, as well as falling productivity and profits, which the AIG appears unable to grasp.
The only “war-footing” Australia needs is to extinguish special interest group pleading by the likes of AIG whose chairman retains a scandalous conflict of interest in also heading the Migration Council.
