Now yesterday we spoke at some lengthy to the State Minister about apprenticeships and the numbers are down this year of young people signing up for apprenticeships and he said that it’s more a less a seasonal thing, in the order of 12.5% that we were down, and I had a call from the shadow Employment and Participation and Training Minister on a Federal level, Dr Andrew Southcott, who wanted to have his say (greetings omitted) – now, what light would you like to shed?

SOUTHCOTT:

I’ve had a look at the figures from South Australia, and I was surprised to hear the Minister’s comment yesterday, he seemed to be saying look – this is no big deal, but what you see over the last 12 months in South Australia, we’ve got 200 fewer young people undertaking an automotive apprenticeship and 200 fewer undertaking an electrical apprenticeship and when you look at the March figures this year compared with the March figures in 08, we see 700 fewer people starting a trade apprenticeship and what we do know is that when the economy recovers we’re going to nee people with these skills and it takes three or four years, so the people who are not entering training now will be leading to skills shortages down the track when the economy recovers and South Australia’s no different from anywhere else around Australia which has been a big fall in commencements particularly in the trade apprenticeships. One of the things that Malcolm Turnbull and I proposed in the Budget Reply was actually to bring forward the incentives for employers for traditional apprenticeships, bring forward to the first two years, to help employers, give them incentives to take on new apprentices and also help with the cash flow while we’ve got an economic downturn.

SMITHSON:

Is part of the problem the stimulus package and the amount that has been poured into school facilities, I have friends in the building trade and they say – we’re flat out at the moment, we couldn’t touch another thing because all the school construction work that’s coming on line is taking up allow our time and energy and tradespeople, but he said after – I know more than one – and the general feeling is – once that work dries up, there’s nothing on the books and that’s what concerns them, but is it a supply and demand situation that we’ve got an over-demand and under-supply, will that balance itself out do you think?

SOUTHCOTT:

I think there’s plenty of young people who would like to take on apprenticeship, and you only have to look at youth unemployment rising, there are fewer jobs available for young people, and we took a different approach, I thought that a more targeted approach was better just to really address the problem which is employers not taking on apprentices. The Government’s approach as you said has been to spend $42 billion and hope that some of that trickles down to employers taking on apprentices. What these figures show is over the last three-quarters, over the nine months, there’s been quite a big fall in the starts for people going into traditional trades – electricians, plumbers, people in construction and people in automotive apprenticeships.

SMITHSON:

So, come the next election perhaps, where do you guys stand in terms of trying to add extra incentive to get more tradespeople back or should that be done at a state level?

SOUTHCOTT:

No, there’s a lot of incentives that come from the Federal level and what we would like to see is employers paid a thousand dollars at the completion of the first year of a trade apprenticeship and paid a thousand dollars at the competition of a second year of the trade apprenticeship, it’s something that will help with cash flow, we also do things that – there’s a lot we can do to encourage young people into apprenticeships. When we had the Australian Technical Colleges that was part of our vision to actually have gold-standard, concentrate the effort and give people a strong pathway through a school-based apprenticeship into a career in the trades.

SMITHSON:

So, I guess at the end of the day, when we apprentices that are lining up now to do the work that is part of the Rudd stimulus package – is there any good to come out of that?

SOUTHCOTT:

Look, one thing that they have done and they agreed it in COAG I think in July was to say that 10% of the hours had to go towards people in training, many State Governments have had this in these contracts for a long time, they haven’t often been policed and I think – watch this space. It will be interesting to see how it actually pans out and that’s why the figures that were released last week do show that there’s a real concern there with people just not starting their trade apprenticeship and we’ll have skills shortages three or four years down the track.

SMITHSON:

Andrew Southcott, the shadow Employment, Participation and Training Minister with the Federal Opposition - thanks for joining us, we’ll see where this all heads – one of those interesting ones, as I said plenty of people in the building trade that I speak to say work is coming out their rear ends at the moment….but beyond, they’re not quite sure where it’s all headed.

ENDS