14-June-2007
Speeches, The Economy, Workplace Relations, Education and Training
Thank you very much, David, and it's nice to be here. Nice to see you in this job. I've had the pleasure of working with David on some projects when I was in business, and it's really good to see him in this capacity, he's doing a great job.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very conscious of the fact that I'm standing between you and a drink after all the proceedings of the day, but the topic I have got is a very important one, I think, and many of you would be very familiar with the dynamics of what is called the skills crisis.
We hear a lot about it, but really in essence, it starts with a labour shortage. And that is driving, in turn, the skills crisis, or the skills shortage that we've got. And to me, it is this sort of a combination of nearly 14 years of uninterrupted economic growth, an ageing population and, in many ways, and the profound emergence of China and India.
There are other factors, but, to me, those three things, in combination, have brought about what is, in many respects, a 21st century phenomena. It is now becoming conventional wisdom and we could all see this coming, and all the rest of it. I did a lot of work with the mining companies at the turn of the century, and I did have access to strategic work for some of those big companies. And I had access to a lot of their serious forecasting work that they do. Some of them have whole buildings full of people doing that sort of thing. I saw in 2000 and 2001 no suggestion amongst any of those companies of what has ultimately happened in China and India. Many of you would be very conscious of that.
So, my sense is that if the big resource companies, the big energy companies who are in every market in the world, exploring, understanding the politics, all the rest of it, if they had no sense of what's coming down the line at us, and all I'm saying is it's there, we've got to deal with it. It's profound, it's got lots of opportunities, lots of threats, but, you know, it's important to recognise that it is a new phenomena.
The whole ageing issue, we did know that was coming, but, again, I think many parts of the community have not focussed. Even today, VECCI, the Victorian chamber, did a survey recently, and it blew me away. Some 64 per cent of the businesses surveyed thought that there was no issue with an ageing population for their businesses, and yet the majority of those businesses had a majority of their staff over 50. The majority of the 64 per cent had a majority of their staff over 50, and they saw no issue coming down the line. I mean, it is something that we need to be realistic about with regard to what's out there.
The fact that last year every day on average 530 more people entered the working age group, not the workforce, necessarily, but the working age group. Every day averaged an extra 530 more entered it than left it, and we've got the problem we've got now with 530 a day net increase.
It is anticipated, if you look at Peter Costello's work that in eight years time that even with the current high levels of migration, we will have 160 people net increase in the working age group each day. So that's 530 back to 160 in the space of the next eight years. So you put all these things together and, you know, we've got an issue now to deal with. But a lot of what we do now has got to position us to deal with an even more difficult situation in terms of available labour and the consequent impact it has on skills.
So, you know, it is a phenomena across the OECD, which also brings other dimensions to this thing. Last year, as David said, I had responsibility for multicultural affairs and related matters. What struck me was the fact that a lot of the migration we've had for 50 years of great success in the country with migration into Australia, but a lot of that migration has come about because a lot of people came from cultures not that far removed from ours. They mightn't have spoken English, but there was a lot of European immigration and all the rest.
Now, a lot of the immigration, both into our country, but also into other OECD countries, to fill and to cope with a lot of the labour shortages, are coming from cultures that are far removed from ours. China, for instance, 10 years ago didn't even rate its own line, it was in the "Other" category. It's now about our third biggest source of migrants and skilled migrants. There are 200,000 from the Middle East and Africa in the last few years.
Now, we will deal with this, but again, for business and the community, there are all these related issues associated with the ageing population and the impact of China, India and uninterrupted economic growth on our business, on our communities and all the rest of it.
Now, I thought I'd give you a sort of overview, if I could, of where, as a government, we're trying to influence it. Because, of course, business has taken a lot of its own initiatives, and the community has taken a lot of its own initiatives. But, as a government, how are we seeking to deal with and facilitate the response towards this.
The fact is that, like in business, there's no silver bullet. If you have a problem, usually you've got many parts to the solution and from my observation, the solution to dealing with coping with this labour and skills shortage covers many policy fronts, welfare to work, workplace reform, taxation, superannuation, independent contractor legislation, skilled migrants, temporary skilled migrants, and a range of other portfolio initiatives.
And if you look back over the last three years in particular, that has dominated our policy agenda. All of those issues. Most of the key policy issues, the skills shortage and the emerging problems has been front and square hitting in the motivation and the need for lower mass.
There are really three broad fronts that we are working on. The first is that we are trying to get anyone who can work into work or to stay in work. That seems a fairly basic proposition, but that is a really critical one trying to get anyone who can work into work or to stay in work. It's driven by the observation that there are large pockets of untapped labour resources in Australia at the present time. We've got 700,000 people on disability pensions, we've got 750,000 people on parenting payments, we've got 490,000 people still on unemployment benefits. We've got 3 million Australians between the ages of 55 and 70, and we've got a quickly growing young indigenous population. Again, for certain sectors, mining and agriculture, particularly, that is a really important future source of labour in certain areas of the country.
Now, the sort of policy responses that are seeking to unlock, untap, some of that untapped labour, is what we're following up. The WorkChoices, the workplace reform, unfair dismissal, for instance, in my view has driven without qualification the 22 per cent reduction in the long term unemployed. That has been the figure that is a really significant figure. You think back over 15 years, it's been very hard to move the long term unemployed back into work. In the last year, 22 per cent reduction in long term unemployment because businesses, and, in the main, a lot of small businesses, are able to say, "I can take the risks with somebody who looks good but hasn't had a job for eight years. He's 27, never had a job, but looks okay, looks motivated. I can take the risk because if it doesn't work out, I can move him on". As a consequence, we've seen across the economy a lot of people, a lot of women on parenting payments who want to work, need to work, their own self esteem to stay in the workforce, maintain skills, but they have been denied opportunities, again, for the same reasons.
Ken Henry said in response to the tax changes and the welfare changes made in the most recent budget that it will lead to an extra 90,000 people in the workforce in the next year because of the interaction between welfare payments and tax. It is a requirement to tackle this on a whole lot of fronts. We are seeking to do that.
The second thing we're trying to do is to encourage those entering the workforce but also those in the workforce to value technical and vocational and creative training in a way that academic training is valued. We made a big mistake as a community in the last 20 to 30 years when we talked down the trades. It has got to a point where technical and vocational training in the minds of many people is seen as a second class career. We've got a situation, I think, where many parents feel they've failed if their children don't go off to university. That's a fact. That is what is in the minds of many people in the country. It's a cultural development over the last 20 to 30 years, which, I think, is really now starting to impact on our ability to deal with this skills issue.
The fact of the matter is that with the current economy and the level of technology and the need to respond to the opportunities and the threats that are there, it is anticipated that we'll need about 20 per cent of the workforce with a university education. Currently we've got about 20 per cent of the workforce with a university education. That's in balance. It is anticipated we'll need about 60 per cent with a high quality technical vocation education. Currently we've got 30 per cent of the workforce. There's a huge gap in that area. One of the things is a cultural issue. Unless we value technical and vocational education you go to Germany, and a master trades person has got the status of a judge or a professor. You know the answer here. They're making a lot of money, but, you know, it has been seen as a second class career. I do think there's a lot we can do.
Everyone in this room, and we've got leaders in this room and a lot of it is what we say, it's what people like myself and people like yourselves and other leaders of industry, it's what we say, other leaders in the community, about the importance of valuing a high quality technical education as much as university education. We're all born with different skills and talents. If you've got strong academic skills, develop those, make the most of them. But most of us are actually born with better or stronger technical and vocational and creative talents than academic talents, and yet we closed every technical high school in the country in the last 20 years.
As a consequence, one of the things we're doing as a government, at the last election we promised to open because they weren't opening and technical education is still a state responsibility 25 Australian technical colleges. They're old style technical skills. They are years 11 to 12. They've got industry boards, they give the young people certificates, but they're one third of the way through an apprenticeship when they finish that year 12. They have two years in the workforce. They earned while they've learned, but, most importantly, they've been in an environment, that technical school environment, where their talents and the focus of the course and all the rest of it is celebrated and focussed on.
You go to some of these schools in Townsville and Port Macquarie, we've got 20 open now in the 18 months since the legislation passed, and you can see these young people bursting with pride. They've got their uniform on, Australian Technical College, the parents are full of pride, the grandparents, because they are giving effect to the talents they've been born with and they do feel valued. It's very important that we feel good about what we're doing. I can't overstate this enough. I think it's so critical that we do as a community start to reposition the goal posts in terms of how we view these technical and vocational areas.
It's why we're doing a lot to keep young people in apprenticeships. I won't go through all the initiatives and things we're doing, but we've got subsidies we're now paying to apprenticeships and apprentices in the first two years, because, in a four year apprenticeship, we're currently losing about 42 per cent of all those who start, 42 per cent. But 38 per cent of that 42 leave in their first two years, because, you know what it's like, the young generation.
Another $5000 from the warehouse down the road, an unskilled job, they're off, because they haven't got as much money as their mates. They're not looking forward. We've got to say to them, "What you've got to do is valued, and what it's good for you, but it's also good for the community and it makes the most of what you're good at".
So we've got getting people into work and staying in work, the 55 to 70 year olds, and, finally, and critically, we've got the need to train and retrain those who are already in the workplace. We've got 3.4 million of the 10 million in the workforce who have not finished school or have no technical training of any consequence 3.4 million. We've got one third of the workforce really with no training of any consequence.
We've got mature age workers who we want to encourage to stay in the workforce. You go to Bunnings now, and to me it's the greatest experience. I can remember when I was younger and had to do the house renovations and all the rest. It was such an excruciating experience to go on Saturday morning and you had no idea of quantities and quality and all the rest of it. You'd waste hours.
You go there now, Bunnings is full of former tradesman and women, people who can no longer physically crawl around the roof and do the plumbing or whatever they did, but at 50, they get a four week training course. Bunnings put them through a retail course, and in there they've got the expertise, they've got the motivation and flexibility in the work. If they want to get in the caravan and go away for six weeks, it's accommodated.
They've got a mindset of taking that expertise, retraining it, leveraging what they have with it, giving them another skill set and putting them in the situation where they feel immensely good about what they're doing. And you can tell. They're telling you things you don't know. They're helping you enormously. It's a great experience, and you can get a cup of coffee with it!
So what I'm saying to you is that they're the three major areas. But, critically, this last one, I want to talk a little bit more about how do we train people and retrain people throughout the workforce. It's a critical issue if we are to overcome that skill gap. Young people are still going to be coming in in big numbers for the next few years, and forever. But, if we don't train and retrain, we've got a real problem, because a lot of the response to a skills shortage and a labour shortage relies on technology. But the existing workforce has to be able to manage and cope with that technology. Again, we've got a cultural problem. There's such a mindset in our community that you do your training at the end of school, and that's it. Now we have to turn it around.
I know from the survey work and other work done, there's a lot of this for people running businesses who feel they've failed if they have to have their people or themselves trained. In fact, the mindset should be, "I'm failing if I'm not constantly looking at training opportunities". Again, that's what we mean by training. People don't understand that it doesn't mean a three year diploma or apprenticeship. It may do, if you want to, but it doesn't have to. A lot of it is just a building blocks approach to adding to people's skills, going back, doing a four week course, bringing you into the workplace.
It was brought home to me in a most profound way recently, the reliance on technology. Years ago, 20 years ago, I was Executive Director of the Cattle Council of Australia. I have some good friends all over the north on cattle stations. My wife and I went to see one of them one Saturday night to have a drink. We got to his property off the main road up in the territory and a couple of hours from Alice, and his home was about 20 minutes off the road. It used to be full of horses, that was the horse track. And we got in there and I said, "We didn't see any horses, where are the horses?".
There was no horse on the place. Like 8000 head of cattle, that was the average property there, and no horses. He said it's all helicopters to do all the mustering. A couple of motorbikes, not many of those since the unions had moved into safety and health and all the rest of it and the insurance costs were through the roof. But, here is, with helicopters and all that.
We've had a drink. He said, "I want to take you down to the yards". Huge set of yards, 8000 head of cattle. And he's got to show me the new cattle crush, you know, "We contain the cattle and do the marking or whatever else you want to do to them", and I look down to a $400,000 cattle crush. And key pads, you can just imagine the piece of equipment. All the gates open, all these things, and I said, "Where are all the cattlemen, you know, riggers?", as they're called. And he said, "I haven't got any riggers on the place. I've got 8000 head of cattle".
His son is 40, and there's himself. He said, "With this sort of equipment, this technology, I use backers, German and Swiss backpackers". A whole cattle station run with backpackers and technology and pilots. He's a pilot and his son's a pilot. I said, "Where's the romance? No horses, no cattlemen, what's going on here?" "We've got all these backpackers". It just shows you.
That's happened in the middle of the Northern Territory. What's going on across our industry everywhere else? It's just unbelievable what's happening. It just brought home to me the technology and the response to that. My sense and I've had 14 weeks in this job, and my keen sense of where the big hits are in the months and years ahead, is to change a culture in a fundamental way.
Not only the culture, the way that we view people in training per se, but also when we get trained and how we get trained. That comes to all the training providers as well. Changing their mindset is probably one of the most important things, about what's made available. But much of that training to accommodate the technology will be skill sets. So people who come in for a three week course, the Bunnings people, four week retail course. Someone will come in to learn the technology.
For a lot of the people, those pockets of untapped people, a lot of them haven't got the confidence to actually even go and do a course. They can go and do short courses, fill a skill set, go and get a job and do that, get some confidence then they go and do something else. But the training has got to be available in these sort of different modules that can be accessed and take account of the fact that these people have got little kids and a sole parent or they're in the workplace and can't head off to a four wall classroom an hour and a half or 20 minutes away and sit up there all day Thursday and do the training. You might think that's silly. It's not. All over the country this is what we're confronting.
We've got a multibillion dollar resource in TAFE. It's 75 per cent of our infrastructure, and it sits there all choked up with regulation and red tape. It is something of great consequence, and I'll come back to it in a second. But, I think the need to build this building blocks approach, so if someone does a four week or six week or six month course and they come back two years later, it is important that that piece of work is recognised, and the experience they've had in between is recognised. So it's the ability to recognise competence and experience. And if you put these building blocks in, they've got something.
One of the interesting things is developing an education passport, so you can tick off different skill sets, and you can go to an employer and they can say, "Yes, I'm a mining operator, you've got ability to drive a shovel. Nothing else, but that's what you can do. That's a critical job. You do that for 12 months and if you want to do something else, I'll help you train and do something else". But it is this mindset, the building blocks. And I think we've got to you've got to demand it, as industry and business. And people like me have got to talk about it and do what we can with initiatives to encourage it.
One of the initiatives we're doing, last year in October we launched a package Skills for the Future, designed for the existing workforce. We had a voucher, a $3000 voucher which goes to individuals in the workforce who haven't finished school and haven't got any serious technical training. We are now double what we expected at the moment after four months of operation. We're getting close to 20,000 vouchers. People take their $3000 voucher and they go to a training provider, whether it's TAFE or whether it's an individual private provider. They can do all sorts of courses, short courses, long courses, certificate II, they can do that with that amount of money.
But, also, they can bundle it up, so if you're an employer in Emerald and you've got 40 staff, you can put it together, 40 staff times 3000, $120,000, you can go down to Brisbane, go to TAFE or a training provider and say, "What can you do? Here's what my needs are, what can you do? When can you do it, how can you do it? By the way, it's out there in Emerald and we've got accommodation".
This opens up, in my view, endless possibilities for flexibility and responsiveness in training. You know, I think going forward, for government at least, one of the ways in which we will in all sorts of different guises, I think, put the power of the purchase in the hands of the individual or the companies and give them the capacity to drive the training response for all the training providers.
I'll finish on this. In strategic terms, with a business, you're trying to get somewhere. In this area we're trying to solve a skills problem. Where are the big hits? Where can we make serious inroads into it? I just talked about one, getting that flexibility, but how do we do it when 75 per cent of our infrastructure is tied up in the TAFE sector? To me, the biggest micro-economic reform in the education sector by a country mile and probably one of the biggest across the economy is to breathe life into our TAFE sector. We've got 74 institutions across 1300 campuses around the country. It's a wonderful resource, and a lot of good people in it.
You only have to look at Victoria. In Victoria, there is a model. In the 1990s, Jeff Kennett came in, economy was a basket case. Jeff said, "I'm going to give autonomy to the TAFEs". The TAFEs in Victoria have now gone from the back of the line to the front of the line and are so far out it doesn't matter. 60 per cent of all of the foreign student money invested is in Victoria.
There are other examples of TAFEs, there are things happening. But, overwhelmingly, we've still got a situation in a number of states, most states, where TAFEs are seriously choked with red tape. You've got $100 million plus businesses where, if the person running it, wants to go overseas to set up some business partnership or go to a course or a conference, they have to get the approval of the minister. You're running a $100 million business in New South Wales and you want to get on an airplane and go to Malaysia to attend an international conference on your area of expertise, your business, you have to write in and get approval of the minister to buy that air plane ticket.
Now, this is an example, in every area of their business, that's what's happening, these sorts of things. It's nonsensical. To me, you know, we need to give the TAFE sector a level or autonomy, at least equal to that enjoyed by the universities. If we're going to see technical and vocational training on a par with universities, just different, then, they need to operate with the same levels of autonomy and same approaches. It is, as I say, one of the great opportunities for very rapid and very important change.
The dead cat on the table in all of that, is the unions. They are instructing the states to maintain that choking control. Jeff Kennett showed it is possible to do it, he did it with the stroke of a pen. And yet in all the other states, some progress is being made, in New South Wales hardly at all, but in others, it's all at different stages. The thing holding them back and I've been meeting with the state ministers and privately they all admit it that it makes sense to give autonomy. By all means, be very transparent, very accountable, but they know it and they can see in Victoria what's happened. The runs are on the board.
I think it is why in this election, and I say this not as a passing comment, the fact that the unions will be front and square, it is why the unions will be front and square of this campaign. It is what impact, what control, what measure of influence do they exert over state Labor governments and the federal government. If you get it wall to wall, what are the implications of that?
I know in Victoria with all the success in Victorian TAFEs, the Victorian government in the last six months has agreed to implement an enterprise agreement across all TAFEs in Victoria, so even things like dual campuses, Ballarat and all these other, will not be able to approach their staff and all the rest of it with the flexibility they've enjoyed in the last 10 years across dual campuses, university and TAFE. Again, it is a very significant issue, and, you know, with 70 per cent of Labor's front bench in the federal Parliament being former union bosses, the issue of union influence over future policy and direction and all the rest of it will be front and square, and it is a very important issue on the table for you, for us, for the community. It must be, I think, a really critical part of the forthcoming election.
To summarise, we're fostering cultural change, which restores the standing of technical and vocational training. There's all sorts of ways we can do that, but a lot is what we say and how we approach it for young people and all those throughout the workforce. Secondly, and most importantly, we are trying to drive responsiveness and flexibility, make it demand driven, not supply driven. That involves a strong economy, in my view, it involves the voucher approach and it involves the building blocks that I talked about. A lot of this is a cultural change, not just for the workforce or for the training providers but for management. It is an important cultural change for all of us, and it's one that's critical. I think if we do these things, I think we'll very able to cope with what's coming down the line. Thank you.
QUESTIONS
CONVENOR: We have time for some questions.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Good day, Andrew, good to see you again. Megan Motto, the Association of Consulting Engineers Australia. You talked about cultural change, and I'd just like to take a step back to where career decisions are made. In tends to be in the middle school, in the middle years of secondary school. We know that the careers advice really doesn't kick in until the later years in schooling.
The careers advice is not implemented throughout the whole of the years of school through dedicated careers advisers. But, more so, student choices at that stage are going to be influenced by their everyday classroom teachers, and teachers will teach what they know, and that is the university experience, because they have university training themselves. I'm interested in initiatives that you might have in mind to get a better interface between industry and classroom teachers as opposed to industry and schools with industry and careers advisers. In my opinion, I really think that classroom teachers are going to keep perpetuating what their experience has been, and you'll never really change the cultural beginnings of the ideology that they've picked up.
ANDREW ROBB: Good point, very good point. I don't think the careers people are any different to anyone else, you can spend a life time pretty much, certainly the last 30 years of there lives, in a community that is really saying, if you don't go to university you're dumb, basically. That's what they're saying. They've had the same experience. Also, they haven't been in the VET area, they've all been to university.
I think one of the best ways of changing their mindset is to try and tackle the community mindset and to showcase the fact that we are now valuing technical skills. That's why these technical schools, which have now become a bit of a political football, but I can tell you, if you go around to the 20 I've seen, they are just breathtaking in terms of building really lovely facilities, a lot of them renovated stuff. It's not wasted money, it's good quality. So they feel they're going somewhere significant.
And there's industry on the boards, and the industry is demanding the sort of curricular and the arrangements by which they do their block training and all the rest. They still get their certificate 12, they still do academic program, but the whole program even the maths and things often picks up examples out of the trade that they're doing. The whole focus is on maximising what they are good at while picking up numeracy and literacy and all the rest and getting their year 12.
I think a lot of it is what we say and what we do. If we've got these little lighthouses all over the country, we reinvent technical schools. Now we've done 28 we've got 20 open and eight in the pipeline. The states, as a result, have been, in a way, shamed into it. I don't care, it's great.
Morris Iemma, he ran the strongest positive ads in the last election, they were basically a rewrite of what we had in 2004. I thought, "How good’s this? He's promising 25 technical schools dedicated to technical skills". So we've now got 40 dedicated technical schools promised by the states. I've got 70 technical schools in the pipeline. By 2009, we will have somewhere close to 30,000 young Australians in technical schools around the country. To me, that starts to say to the community and the careers advisers and all of this, this is now legitimate. We've got to put some money into it and decision making behind it. Just not talk about, we must do it. I think there's other things, but that is a really critical issue.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Thanks, Minister. I heard Helen Clark speak this week, and one of the questions that she was asked was what is she most proud of that she has done as Prime Minister of New Zealand. She said that she was passionate about encouraging New Zealand families to be passionate about education.
She really went much further back to formative years. I don't know what the percentage is in Australia of three and four year olds at kindergartens, perhaps you can tell us that, but she introduced legislation which may three and four year old kindergartens free. She said that is really encouraging families to put children into kindergarten, which then had an added economic benefit because the mums could go back to work without having to pay for childcare. So I'm just interested in your comment on that.
ANDREW ROBB: I've got to admit that the secondary schooling, rather than the VET area is mine, so Julie Bishop is more responsible for this area and has studied this in more detail. I could give you a generic response but not one that is a result of my responsibilities. I do think that, you know, the significance of education, it does start at an early age, but it's got to be appropriate.
To me, force-feeding kids at three to four is not the answer. But they have got a capacity at that age, in my opinion, to start learning, stimulation. But how it is done is quite important. And some kids are different to others, so some kids are not ready for it. So, I think, all of that needs to be taken into account.
I can't compare Australia with New Zealand, because I just don't think you can. I don't know whether they're more successful than us and her pride is well placed. Certainly, there is a growing opportunity for three and four year olds and parents taking up the issue themselves.
There is assistance in a lot of these facilities now, and there is major consciousness that in the sort of workforce that we now have, the workplace we now have, that providing opportunities for those, particularly women, who've got childcare responsibilities to continue to participate in the way they wish to and can is important.
The whole ability to provide childcare or learning opportunities or a combination of those is a critical part of going forward. I think both sides of politics agree with that. How we go about it might be different, but the need for it is, I think, recognised by all major parties. But I still think there is a reasonable view across the community of the importance of education.
As a country we can always improve on things, but that is not something where we're trailing in any sense. But I do think there's been a very unhealthy bias towards academic education. Even at three or four, there would be kids there who have clearly got talents that relate to creative or technical skills, good with their hands and not showing much interest in other things.
We've just to get to a point where whatever talents you've been born with, we celebrate them and value them and allow those to be made the most of. Do what you do best, and know that what you do is valued. If you do what you do best, the individual is better off and the community is better off. So I think we've got a serious problem at that level.
MALE SPEAKER: …(inaudible)… young people to speak out. Is that something that the government is looking at addressing? Employers say they can't pay more. …(inaudible)…
ANDREW ROBB: Actually, that is one of the things that was exercising me mind, and in the recent budget we introduced provision for first and second year apprentices to receive $1000 a year tax free as a wage top up. It's not going to solve all the problems, but someone at that stage getting $1000 a year in their pocket, untaxed, that is not just there to keep the wage up to comparable levels but also to say that what they're doing is important. A four year apprenticeship in the main, 42 per cent are leaving before they finish it, 38 of the 42 in the first two years. So it is, in my opinion, part of it is the money.
We've also introduced in the budget a $500 voucher to go towards TAFE fees or private providers. So $3000 over the first two years, an $800 tool kit, so that's $3,800. So that's half a billion dollars worth of stuff. It's as much about saying to them that what you do is important, the government values it, the community values it. Part of that, there are a lot of employers, because they have to, some say they can't, and I'm sure they can't, but they are topping up significantly.
…(inaudible)… It's a first and second year problem, and we have sought to do something about it, starting with a top up. It's part of the mix. Now we've got to try and free up the type of training that's available. Because in a lot of areas, like agriculture, for instance, and a lot of other areas, they want their skills. The mining industry wants their skills.
The mining industry has got all this pool of labour, but they haven't got three years or four years to do the training. They want them to do certain tasks, and they want them trained well. …(inaudible)… do the training, get them skilled up, and away they go. These people have a career in mind and can do lots of other training and get skills.
CONVENOR: I have to say, after 14 weeks in your portfolio, you're already showing deep feeling and enthusiasm for the subject. Thank you very much, again, for being so generous.