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Event: Interview with Meecham Philpott, ABC Radio Mackay
Date: 24 September 2024, 7:40am AEST
Speakers: Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia
Topics: Labour shortages, Future of the Workforce Report
E&OE
Meecham Philpott, ABC Radio Mackay Host: Well, as you heard, the mayor of Mackay Regional Council said, there’s 4000 plus blocks of land sitting around ready to go. Let’s can’t get the building going for all sorts of different reasons, but on the horizon and perhaps, maybe there’s some light at the end of the tunnel, Master Builders Australia have come out the future of the future of the workforce report and looking at how we get going and get on the front foot and get building. The CEO of Master Builders Australia is Denita Wawn, who’s with us this morning. Denita, as always, welcome back to the program.
Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia: Thank you and good morning, everyone.
Meecham: So, future workforce report, tell me a bit about that, please.
Denita: Well, we know that one of the biggest handbrakes on building homes, our roads, our hospitals, our schools, at the moment, is a shortage of workers. And so we wanted to quantify the problem, but more importantly, focus on how we can resolve it. So there’s a series of recommendations there in all sorts of different areas, but ultimately, we came up with a figure that, as well as replacement, we need an additional 130,000 workers. So if you think about it, there’s about 1.4 million workers in our sector. At the moment, we need well over 1.5 to be able to actually do what we need to do to resolve the housing crisis. And that’s not just about building our homes. It’s making sure you’ve got critical infrastructure ready so we can actually build in the first place.
Meecham: I just wanted to check something on that, about when you’ve got infrastructure gigs, of which we’ve got several slated here, big road works, perhaps a pumped, a pumped hydro project and so forth. Those jobs that they kind of compete, don’t they, from the housing industry to sort of the infrastructure industry such as?
Denita: Yeah, they do, and it’s interesting. I mean, we represent all sectors of the industry, including civil works. And of course, you need those infrastructure projects. You’ve got to make sure that we can actually travel to housing communities, that we can actually get water and sewage to those new housing blocks. So they’re all important. And this is the big issue we’ve got at the moment in Australia, that we’ve got booming infrastructure projects, we’ve got huge commercial projects and a massive housing shortage, and its east west and everything in between. So that’s why we’ve got the pressure, and of course, compounded by the fact that we have not been good at encouraging people to do a trade, not for at least the 1980s and that’s where we need to really focus our attention, as well as looking at migration options as well.
Meecham: Okay, so the key, it’s interesting, 130,000 is pretty much the population of Mackay city. So we’ve all got to turn all the entire population of Mackay into workers into the building industry. The key is what, shipping them in from overseas, but combining with apprenticeships?
Denita: Yeah, it’s a combination of things. I mean, I’d love to encourage, and I’ve been up to Mackay a few times, and every time I talk to some builders up there, they go, all my tradies go to the mines. So we’re also competing with the mining industry as well, but, yeah, we need to, in the short term, look at migration options. You know, New Zealand, Canada and UK have a great tradie visa, and they don’t just focus on getting them into the country, but it’s also helping them through the quagmire of the bureaucratic process of getting your qualifications recognised, and that’s time consuming and costly. So that’s one of the big issues that we want to focus on. But it’s also about encouraging people to do apprenticeships in construction trades, huge opportunities for people and certainly, and not just the boys, with only 4% of our trade workforce, the women, huge opportunities, well paid jobs. So we’re encouraging the girls to get in there as well.
Meecham: Well when I think about it, because my first job after school was a brickies labourer working in Sydney, and the more I think about I’m pretty sure I was the only Anglo in the crew. Everyone else was from Croatia and a couple of Czech lads and a couple of guys from what they called Yugoslavia back in those days, that was kind of normal. That’s back in the 80s.
Denita: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, 25% of our workforce are migrants, and proudly so, yet, in the last five years, only 3% of our workforce has come from migrant populations. And of course, we can’t forget, there’s a huge number of people on various different visas already in the country that find it too expensive and too hard to get their actual qualifications. The amount of electricians and electrical engineers I meet that are driving around in Ubers and taxis is extraordinary, and simply because they don’t have enough money to get their qualifications recognised and get their licensing, so we’ve got to support those people as well. There’s too many under qualified people in this country, sorry, under worked, in terms of their qualifications.
Meecham: Yeah, so, from where you sit at the end of the day, the key to the whole thing is, is government red tape?
Denita: A lot of it is government red tape. Surprise, surprise, absolutely infuriating, but so we don’t need a huge amount of changes. We need some more targeted programs when it comes to apprenticeships. We’re waiting for a report from the federal government on that. We need to get rid of the red tape. We need more arrangements and focus between state and federal government around recognition of qualifications and licensing for trade qualified people. And we also need to encourage more kids to get into a trade. But also not just kids mature age as well. Seeing a lot of mature age people say, you know what, I’ve had enough of my career sitting behind a desk or stuck at home working from home, I’m going to actually go and get a trade. And it’s great to see a lot of mature age apprentices out there these days.
Meecham: Yeah, well, look, people may well say that what I’m about to ask you is just crazy talk in the woke world that we live in, but we’ve done it before, and I’m talking about the Snowy River scheme that we built all those years ago where we offered people around the world a chance to come to Australia. You come over here for a couple of years, and the deal was, we’ll pay you well, and your family can come over in two years, and, you know, we’ll get you rolling as citizens of Australia. I mean, is that? Is that even a possibility? Because the way I see it, I know I’m just sitting here in Mackay, but I cannot remember in my 59 years, as a citizen of Australia, where there’s a housing- No one can afford it, to rent a house, anywhere in the country. I’m not talking about a boom area, but the whole country just desperately needs houses. We need people from overseas, we need them now. with the skills, don’t we?
Denita: Yeah, we do. I mean, when you’ve got housing costing 40% more than that than what it was five years ago, we need more people. We know that. And so, yeah, you’re absolutely right, and that’s the type of thing that we’ve encouraged. And I think good on the federal government, they’ve at least recognised that we had too many people on temporary visas and not enough incentive to be become a permanent resident. And so they’re the types of things that we need to focus but they need to be targeted on the skills we need. You know, there’s always an argument to say, well, we’ve got to stop migrants because we don’t have, not have enough housing. But the reality is, if we don’t get enough skilled migrants to build those houses, we’re stuffed. And so our argument is targeted migration programs the key to making sure that we can encourage more trade people to this country.
Meecham: You reckon this will blow up into a massive thing for the federal election? Because, in all reality, we’re going to the polls next year fairly early.
Denita: Absolutely, we know from all of our research that at the housing crisis is the number one issue from an election perspective. We know that, yes, a lot of these issues are state government led, but the people of Australia are looking for the federal government to focus and have some leadership. There’s certainly been some good decisions made, but the rubber now needs to hit the road. A lot of talk, but not enough action. And so the focus for us is making sure that these recommendations that we’ve put to government are actually taken up.
Meecham: Denita, look, I’ll leave it there for this morning, but thank you so much for being on the program. Always appreciate our chats.
Denita: Absolute pleasure and take care everyone for the day.
Meecham: Good as gold. Tata. Denita Wawn, the CEO of Master Builders.
Media contact:
Ben Conolly
Media & Public Affairs Senior Advisor
0423 151 666
ben.conolly@masterbuilders.com.au