Federal government to lay out roadmap for future of skills, training and employment in Australia

A roadmap for the future of skills, training and employment in Australia will be set out by the federal government today.

Transcript

00:00 Well it might be called white paper but it's actually a blueprint on just how Australians

00:06 can really take advantage of some of the major shifts that we're seeing in the economy and

00:11 it's also about how the government is going to tackle some of those challenges like lacklustre

00:17 productivity and really sluggish wages growth.

00:20 It is going to be released at midday and importantly it's going to contain some information about

00:27 exactly how a successful full employment will look for Australia and that's in response

00:34 to a Reserve Bank board review that had actually asked for that full employment data to be

00:40 much more specific so that the government and agencies know exactly what sort of targets

00:46 they're working towards given that we haven't actually had a white paper full employment

00:51 since 1945 just after the Second World War.

00:55 You're also likely to see about nine new policy initiatives, they will be across a range of

01:00 cabinet portfolios and the Treasurer Jim Chalmers says that this is going to be a whole of government

01:06 approach because it's also going to tie in other issues and possibilities like the National

01:13 Skills Agreement, the Universities Accord and also the Migration Review as well and

01:19 so this white paper will reflect some of those issues that have come up in the past.

01:26 One of the things that we're likely to see is actually a skills passport and that is

01:31 going to allow workers to be able to much more easily advertise their qualifications.

01:36 Jim Chalmers has said that this is really important to ensure that we can upskill people

01:43 and make sure that people actually have the in-demand skills and qualifications for moving

01:51 ahead into the decades, those areas like care, digitisation and also net zero and he says

01:59 that this is about Australians being masters of their own destiny.

02:04 Just in terms of some of those skills shortages, we're going to see the government pour in

02:09 about $41 million into turbo charging TAFE centres of excellence as well as making sure

02:16 that they can accelerate the take up of higher degrees and also apprenticeships in some of

02:22 those really demand areas and that's on top of the $325 million that's already been spent

02:29 in this space.

02:30 So there are certainly a lot of challenges ahead, however this white paper hopes to address

02:36 those and come up with some real opportunities for Australians in the shape of employment

02:42 going forward.

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