E&OE

Laura Jayes:
Universities and TAFE are calling on the Government to introduce additional funding and boost apprenticeship wages. It’s hoped that it will encourage Australians to add to their credentials and fix the worker shortage. Joining me now is a very important panel – Universities Australia Chief Executive, Catriona Jackson, and the National Apprentice Employment Network CEO, Dianne Dayhew.

Ladies, thanks so much for your time, I really appreciate it. First, I want to get your reaction to what we’ve just seen. Finally, an announcement. This has been strung out over weeks and, of course, over the first day of the summit. That is, 195,000 migrants, the cap has been lifted. Catriona, first to you, is that enough?

Catriona Jackson:
Look, it’s really important that we balance absolutely upskilling our population here in Australia with migration changes. We would argue very strongly that one thing that is a really short-term and really intelligent thing to do on the floor today is to just try and increase, try and smooth the visa process, to increase the number of those terrific international graduates who are already here and have already made a significant investment in Australia, and have terrific Australian university degrees.

Catriona Jackson:
If we can increase the retention of those students, those graduates from 16 per cent, only 16 per cent of them stay here and in other countries way more than that stay, we have ready made, committed, terrifically bright graduates who can walk straight into hospitals and walk straight into engineering plants. Why wouldn’t we just fix some of the slightly antiquated visa settings that we have to encourage some of them to stay on?

Laura Jayes:
We’ve just learned as well, 900,000 applications still waiting to be processed. Dianne, that’s actually staggering. What’s your reaction to that? The money put behind getting more employees to actually process those visas and that migration cap.

Dianne Dayhew:
Well certainly we’ve seen such an acute skill shortage here in Australia because we have lost our migrant workforce, which has really highlighted the need that we have to train our own skills here in Australia. But obviously, we don’t have the workers for the jobs that we need, so migration is certainly a very important strategy and we think it’s a positive announcement.

Laura Jayes:
What about the TAFE announcement as well? It was for vocational education more broadly. We saw that on day one. Anthony Albanese kicked off the summit with $1 billion, more than a billion dollars, and 180,000 fee-free places. That’s great. But practically, do you have the capacity? I mean, is there the capacity to do it? Where are all the teachers coming from? Are the campuses big enough? Are there enough courses?

Dianne Dayhew:
With the TAFE announcement, certainly, it’s extremely welcome. We need more trained workers and TAFE is a very valued institution to provide that to the Australian workforce. But we think it’s the beginning of the solution and certainly it’s a very welcome announcement and we think it’s headed in the right direction.

We know that there is a teacher shortage as well, a trainer shortage in TAFE. Like any workforce, there are skill shortages wherever we go. So TAFE has those issues as well. But we think that the fact that there will be funded places will really support TAFE. Now is the time for us to really get behind it.

Laura Jayes:
Catriona, the responsibility of universities as well to try and solve this skills crisis, what is the plan there, and what do you need from government?

Catriona Jackson:
Look, it’s absolutely fundamental that both vocational education and university education in this country is really strong. In some cases we work really closely together…some dual sector university, vocational and higher ed on the one campus. We need to absolutely be cooking with gas on all fronts to make sure that students have a genuine choice of the sort of education that they want. It’s terrific to see those extra places today, and really good to see some additional university places as well.

Laura Jayes:
Do you work together enough? I mean, do universities and TAFE and vocational education sectors…Is there too much overlap? I mean, can you work together a bit better?

Catriona Jackson:
Look, we have quite distinctive missions, I think, and we can always do more and do better, Laura, of course. But there is more collaboration and more joint work than you think. As I said, six universities already are dual sector universities.

So there’s vocational and higher ed on the same campus, but it’s very important that both sectors are working really hard. VET has had it really tough in the last couple of decades, systematically defunded. This country needs a strong VET sector to complement higher education so that students have a really genuine choice.

Laura Jayes:
Dianne, what about pay, and particularly the pay of apprentices? Is that prohibitive to getting more migrants here and more people into those trades?

Dianne Dayhew:
Sure. We know there’s a lot of discussion about wages at the moment and apprentices are part of that discussion. And certainly, we think that apprentices should be paid well for the work that they do. With apprenticeships, they are paid while they learn, a little bit different to a university pathway. So they don’t end up with a HECS debt. They go into work and they are paid accordingly, to reflect the fact that 20 per cent of their time is actually spent in training and that’s off-the-job training.

But we feel that there should be some practical solutions as well delivered and practical support that can benefit an apprentice financially as well. Let’s think about all the expenses that an apprentice has when they start work, particularly if they’re in the trades, the tools are incredibly expensive.

They need to go and get their license done, too. That’s one of the first things that employers ask…”Do you have your driver’s license? Do you have a car? Do you have a ute?”. So we think that government can think about those practical supports as well, helping with driving lessons, registrations, tools for the trade, and so on. So we think that there should be some broader thought about how to financially support apprentices as well as the wage discussion.

Laura Jayes:
Yeah. Catriona, what about unis and their responsibility in actually trying to get school leavers to do courses to solve the skills crisis? I mean, I know when I did my journalism degree, there were hundreds of kids in the first lecture and the lecturer said…”Look around you because only 10 per cent of you will actually get a job in journalism.” I mean, that seems counterproductive. I think that’s still happening. Are you incentivising, are universities incentivising people to go into courses where we actually need people to be trained in those areas?

Catriona Jackson:
You’ve done pretty well, Laura.

Look, it’s incredibly important that careers advice in schools is frankly, better than it currently is so people understand the range of options. We heard from Scott Farquhar yesterday from Atlassian talking about the fact that there are so many tech jobs. He’s trying to employ lots of people with deep tech skills, same for companies like Visy.

We need to make sure that students have a really clear understanding of the sorts of options there are for them. But ultimately there are a couple of things in the recipe for success in university study. Students have got to really want to take the study on, take the subjects on that they want. So you can’t say … “You know what? You like journalism. We’d rather you did economics.”

Laura Jayes:
Yeah.

Catriona Jackson:
So you’ve got to have that element of student choice as well. I just want to take the time though, to welcome this serious contribution on the visa backlog. The visa backlog has been a real problem for universities. We think about 20 per cent of those international student visas have been stalled for much longer than they should just because of the backlog. It’s terrific to see additional action from the Government today on that. It will be a terrible shame if, after the last couple of years where those students have been waiting so patiently to get back here, if we lost them to overseas countries because their visa was being stalled. So great to see that push to get rid of that backlog.

Laura Jayes:
Well Catriona and Dianne, I mean, we are solving all the problems here on AM Agenda alongside the job summit. Well, actually, we should do it all here. Who knows? Ladies, thanks so much for your time. Appreciate it. We’ll talk soon.

Catriona Jackson:
Pleasure.

Dianne Dayhew:
Thank you.