ADDRESS BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THlE 11ON. R. J. L. HAW1KS, A. C.
TO THE NATIONAL FINALS OF WORK SKILL AUSTRALIA
9 M4AY 1983'
I am delighted to be with you on this great
occasion the national finals of the Work Skill Australia
skills competition. Here today are the cream of Australia's young
tradespeople you have successfully competed in
competitions all over Australia to reach these National
Finals, the first in Australia.
This national program of skill competitions -Work
Skill Australia is a new and exciting landmark in
Australia's trade training.
It began only last year. Yet despite its short
history, it has already had enthusiastic support from
thousands of our young apprentices right around Austr-alia.
These National Finals are a marvellous tribute to
that support. But as well as congratulating you, the competitors,
let me pa y another tribute.
This is to the judges and the professionalshundreds
of you who've worked so tirelessly to make these
Skill Olympics the great success they so clear-ly are.
You all deserve our congratulations.
I'm fortunate to have witnessed a small part of the
development and work that has culminated in these National
Finals.
The task of Work Skill Australia -promoting
enthusiastic highly skilled tradespeople -is as vital as
ever. Our capacity as a nation to lift our standard of
living depends very much on the talent, initiative and
skills of our young tradespeople.
The skills you are demonstrating today are central
to our industrial society.
Those skills are very often hidden in the
factories and the workshops away from the public gaze.
But today they are on display.
Your skills are being recognized in a way they so
thoroughly deserve.
There is one special reason why those skills should
be recognised and fostered.
Unless we can maintain intakes of apprentices at
sufficient levels, we do risk serious shortages of skilled
labour in the years ahead as economic recovery gathers
momentum. The lead time for the training of apprentices is
substantial -4 years in most cases.
Employers, and indeed the whole community, need to
take a long term view to supporting apprentice intakes to
ensure the Australian workforce does have the skill it needs
for the future.
Work Skill Australia was itself a project of the
Evatt Foundation, which I had the privilege of helping set
up. I was also an inaugural member of the Board of Work
Skill Australia in my former capacity as Shadow Minister for
Employment and Industrial Relations.
My colleague, Ralph Willis, as the Minister for
Employment and Industrial Relations, will today join the
Board, so enabling continued involvement by my Government.
The Board of Work Skill Australia has
representatives from unions, employers and government.
It is an example of the kind of cooperation between
these three groups so essential to our nation's progress.
That spirit of cooperation between government,
unions and employers was shown strikingly last month in
Canberra at the National Economic Summit Conference.
The Summit Conference was an overwhelming Success.
It marks a new beginning for Australia, a first
step toward our great goals of national reconciliation,
reconstruction and recovery.
In particular, the Summit focussed on the need for
Australia to respond to the challenges before us in a
cooperative and innovative'manner.
Nowhere is the need to consider new approaches more
evident than in our apprenticeship and training systems'.
Despite our great economic problems, today is a day
of celebration.
Work Skill AuIstralia, by raising the status Of
skill training as a career and promoting higher standards,
is helping to create that long term outlook.
The task of improving our trade training system is
a major challenge for Australia. The main source of our
skilled labour is, of course, apprenticeship training.
The apprenticeship system has served Australia
well. Even so, it has some glaring faults.
One, in particular, is that the opportunities
provided for young women are far too limited.
Of Australia's 140,000 apprentices, only about
per cent are women.
If the traditional female area of hairdressing is
excluded, less than 2 per cent of apprentices are women.
This is just not good enough!
Quite apart from the question of equity and
fairness, it makes no sense for us as a nation to so
blatantly squander the potential of our young women by
largely excluding them from apprenticeship training.
It is incumbent, first of all, on employers to
consider much more closely-the employment of female
apprentices, including in so-called non-traditional trade
areas. It is also appropriate for young women themselves
to consider the possibility of apprenticeships across the
whole gamut of trade areas and for those women who do enter
these fields to be given the full support of their parents,
employers and work colleagues.
Ladies and ge ntlenen, Wnrk Skill ! Australia has made
its mark extremely quickly.
This is shown no better than in thiese N'ational
Finals here today.
These finals are a first for Australia.
And I am able to formally announce that they wi) ll
soon be followed by another first the fielding of the
first Australian team at the International Skill Olympics in
Austria this August.
That team will be represented by some of you here.
I take this opportunity to wish every success to
those of you who will represent Australia at that splendid
International event.
I also invite the Australian team to visit me in
Canberra before the departure for Austria if you can fit
it in. Because of the great importance we attach to Work
Skill Australia, the Federal Government has decided to make
a special grant of $ 100,000 to the project, intended
particularly as a contribution to the Australian team's
participation in Austria.
Looking further ahead, Work Skill Australia has
already obtained the optiofi of holding the 1988
International Skil. Olympics in Australia.
I believe this event would be a tremendous boost to
the recognition of trade training in Australiai as well as a
major event in the nation's Bicentennial Celebrations.
biscussiors are already taking place with the
Bicentennial Authority to develop this proposal further.
; Let us make it our challenge to foster and develop
the skills and talents of our workforce so that by 1988, the
Bicentennial Year, we can show the world we stand among the
very forefront of industrial nations.
I congratulate all of you on the great success of
these first National Work Skill finals and, once again, wish
those of you who will compete in Austria later this year
every success.