29 August 2022

Context

As the ‘Education State’ and a critical business and economic hub, Victoria’s perspective is vital to addressing nationwide skills and labour shortages. The Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) convened a stakeholder forum on Monday 22 August to capture the Victorian position and communicate it in this document ahead of the Jobs and Skills Summit in September.

Attendees present at the forum, who have provided input into this Communique are listed in Appendix A.

We share the goals of lifting productivity, high workforce participation, addressing and preventing skills shortages and developing a highly skilled workforce. Together, we agree that an approach based on meaningful collaboration will create better and more effective solutions, not just for recovery, but also for solidifying our economic growth and wider prosperity into the future.

Introduction

Actions must be taken from the Summit that not only address the urgent challenges in the workforce, but also lift productivity, ensure high participation and build a skilled workforce for the jobs of the future.

The combination of unprecedented industry-wide labour shortages, record low unemployment and ongoing economic challenges reinforce the urgency to implement innovative labour market solutions. We need a plan to boost Australia’s stagnant productivity and to improve participation in the labour market, including those workers who have been disengaged in the past. Now is the time to address previously ingrained disadvantage and bias, particularly among women, First Nations Peoples and Australians with a disability.

The principles of partnership and ‘a fair go for all’ are key to the recommendations we put forward.

At this turning point for the Australian approach to jobs and skills, we are genuinely stronger together. Through a partnership approach, we can be bold in the solutions we create. Together, we can help address the entrenched issues that hold us back as a nation.

Our recommended actions for the Summit and beyond fall under nine categories. The categories are: Industrial Relations, Migration and International Talent, Workforce Participation, Fit-For-Purpose Education and Training, First Nations, Workplaces of the Future, Regulation and Compliance, Regional and Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The actions under these themes encompass both short and long-term solutions.

Recommendations

Industrial Relations

1. Quantify the impact of industrial relations settings on productivity and innovation to identify areas that are working well and those that are holding us back.
2. Remove ambiguity in the Awards system to reduce complexity and improve productivity for those engaging with them.
3. Create codes of conduct to improve the reputation of collective bargaining processes.
4. Clarify the role of casual workers to reduce the conflation of the casual workforce with the gig economy.
5. The ‘better off overall test’ should be interpreted with common sense and as originally intended – to provide a better outcome for employees overall rather than a line-by-line approach.

Migration and International Talent

1. Provide pathways to residency for international students, including four-year post study work rights, and workers on employer-sponsored and priority-skilled occupation visas to improve their employability and provide employers with more certainty when investing in foreign talent.
2. Benchmark maximum visa processing times for migrants to reduce delays and attract more skilled talent to Australia.
3. Increase the migration cap to 250,000 per year to address gaps in the labour market.
4. Improve recognition of prior learning and experiences as well as foreign qualifications of migrant workers to allow them to work in their fields of expertise.
5. Provide more temporary humanitarian visa holders with permanent residency to expand our local talent pool.
6. Automatically extend all working visas for migrants already ‘in-country’ for two years to retain our current migrant workforce.
7. Allow flexibility in working visa conditions to enable migrants to transition into different areas or new industries with critical skills shortages.
8. Undertake a ‘Brand Australia’ campaign, encouraging skilled migrants to relocate to Australia, to increase competitiveness and address critical skills shortages.

Workforce Participation

1. Commit to a Youth Guarantee to drive down the number of young people ‘not engaged in employment, education or training’ (‘NEET’), offering all Australians under the age of 25 an employment, education or apprenticeship/traineeship opportunity within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education.
2. Reduce barriers to working more than one job, such as the secondary income tax, to increase workforce flexibility and utilisation.
3. Allow pension and superannuation recipients to work at least the equivalent of three days a week without impacting their payments to provide them with more certainty and increase availability of skills in the workforce.
4. Improve and fund access to quality early childhood education, and before and after school care to allow more parents to return to the workforce.
5. Ensure government unemployment services are easy and accessible for employers to use to increase employment opportunities for unemployed Australians.
6. Ensure government unemployment services can deliver flexible and timely solutions to clients through offering housing, uniform, training solutions, and more to overcome barriers to employment.
7. Be deliberate about removing barriers to allow more women to participate in the workforce.

Fit-For-Purpose Education and Training

1. Transform careers education in Australia, so that it better meets the needs of students and industry, including the inclusion of career development services in the national curriculum starting from primary school. A new national approach should leverage knowledge and investment being made in the Victorian school and training system.
2. Increase government investment in strategies that keep students engaged at school, to reduce the number of school leavers without a Year 12 qualification or a training pathway, to improve employment prospects for young Australians.
3. Integrate the education system and regulators across all levels so that it:
   1. Provides a single student identifier across all education levels, including school
   2. Clearly shows prior leaning history
   3. Facilitates non-linear career paths and lifelong learning.
4. Provide a forward plan for using microcredentials to upskill career changers to provide industry and the education sector clarity. This would include consideration of timing, funding, accreditation and the need to be agile and fit for purpose. This must augment and not detract from the current high-quality education offered in universities and TAFEs.
5. Commit to subsidies for apprenticeships and trainees with a wage subsidy breakdown of: Year one – 25 per cent wage subsidy, Year two – 15 per cent wage subsidy, and Year three – 10 per cent wage subsidy.
6. Increase funding for VET and expand the definition of apprenticeships and trainees who can receive subsidies.
7. Provide targeted employer support and training to increase apprenticeship completions.
8. Review and remove unnecessary barriers for course entry to increase upskilling and enrolments and improve productivity. This needs to happen alongside improved engagement pre-entry to ensure people are enrolling in the right courses.
9. Establish an annual industry and education engagement summit to showcase best practice engagement and open clear and formal avenues for collaboration.
10. Dedicate funding to meet the needs of specific cohorts of learners (e.g., Australians with disability and First Nations Peoples) to increase completion rates.
11. Dedicate funding for data collection from students who withdraw or do not complete their courses to understand their reasons for not completing and to constantly evolve and tailor the supports available.
12. Increase availability and reduce costs of training placements for health and community service workers to meet the significant requirements of the workforce.

First Nations

1. Scale up funding for First Nations co-designed training and employment programs to ensure meaningful, fit-for-purpose solutions are delivered.
2. Dedicate funding for First Nations co-designed digital capability and readiness for future jobs for emerging technologies initiatives to meet the specific needs of First Nations communities.
3. Dedicate funding for First Nations co-designed digital access initiatives to ensure all communities have access to digital resources and infrastructure.
4. Create a fund to support access to finance and capital by First Nations individuals, communities, and organisations.
5. Establish of a First Nations Future Economy lead in government responsible for unlocking First Nations Peoples’ potential within growth and emerging industries to ensure inclusion now.

Workplaces of the Future

1. Establish how the workplaces of the future (comprising emerging industries, the modern labour market, and a highly productive economy) will navigate and address unconscious and conscious bias to women.
2. Create a plan for Australia’s renewable energy sector, including the workforce development of the necessary workers and changes in regulation to provide a forward plan of how we will create the workforce and infrastructure needed.
3. Create a circular economy national strategy. Align investment targets with the skills development needed, to ensure a ‘joined up approach’ in the delivery of government priorities.
4. Facilitate cross-collaboration and insight sharing between businesses to increase national productivity.
5. Lift the attractiveness of care economy roles to meet the current and future workforce demands.
6. Increase on-the-job training opportunities for care economy roles to boost upskilling in the workforce.

Regulation and Compliance

1. Review and reduce the requirements required for industry-experienced people to become VET teachers, either full-time or part-time, to address the teacher shortages.
2. Reduce the compliance required with training product development to increase local education provider’s ability to deliver locally tailored solutions.
3. Review and reduce duplicate information within government agencies reporting requirements to save time and lift productivity.
4. Ensure there is a government commitment to a culture of regulatory reform to decrease time spent on compliance and regulation.

Regional

1. Ensure digital connectivity is available across the country, to facilitate education and employment opportunities for all.
2. Create a plan to solve regional housing shortages to provide the infrastructure required for regional workers.
3. Create an Agriculture Passport to allow seasonal employees to work across different growers and farms according to seasonal demand.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

1. Establish a Federal Innovation Fund to help turn ideas into commercial products and services.
2. Develop a comprehensive Innovation and Commercialisation (I&C) Ecosystem, similar to Silicon Valley and Boston, with wrap around services, whereby universities, research institutions, private industry and venture capital all collaborate to attract more skilled talent from around the world.
3. Fund formal commercialisation training to help businesses develop and find new markets for their products and services.
4. Improve access to government funding for Small, Medium and Family Enterprises (SMFEs) by simplifying Research and Development (R&D) grant processes and providing guidance when lodging applications.
5. Establish sectoral-based R&D brokers to work with education research institutions and industry to identify researchers with the appropriate capabilities to solve industry problems.
6. Establish an industry-led online marketplace that connects industry with education research institutions, product designers, and manufacturers to solve industry problems.

Actions over the short, medium, and long term

JUMP TO THEME:

Theme: Industrial Relations  

SHORT

1. Create codes of conduct to improve the reputation of collective bargaining processes.
2. Clarify the role of casual workers to reduce the conflation of the casual workforce with the gig economy.
3. The “better off overall test” should be interpreted with common sense and as originally intended – to provide a better outcome for employees overall rather than a line-by-line approach. 

MEDIUM

1. Remove ambiguity in the Awards system to reduce complexity and improve productivity for those engaging with them.

LONG-TERM

1. Quantify the impact of industrial relations settings on productivity and innovation to identify areas that are working well and those that are holding us back.

Theme: Migration and International Talent

SHORT

1. Provide pathways to residency for international students, including four-year post study work rights, and workers on employer-sponsored and priority-skilled occupation visas to improve their employability and provide employers with more certainty when investing in foreign talent.
2. Benchmark maximum visa processing times for migrants to reduce delays and attract more skilled talent to Australia.
3. Increase the migration cap to 250,000 per year to address gaps in the labour market.
4. Improve recognition of prior learning and experiences as well as foreign qualifications of migrant workers to allow them to work in their fields of expertise.
5. Provide more temporary humanitarian visa holders with permanent residency to expand our local talent pool.
6. Automatically extend all working visas for migrants already ‘in-country’ for two years to retain our current migrant workforce.

MEDIUM

1. Allow flexibility in working visa conditions to enable migrants to transition into different areas or new industries with critical skills shortages.
2. Undertake a ‘Brand Australia’ campaign, encouraging skilled migrants to relocate to Australia, to increase competitiveness and address critical skills shortages. 

Theme: Workforce Participation

SHORT

1. Commit to a Youth Guarantee to drive down the number of young people ‘not engaged in employment, education or training’ (‘NEET’), offering all Australians under the age of 25 an employment, education or apprenticeship/traineeship opportunity within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education.
2. Allow pension and superannuation recipients to work at least the equivalent of three days a week without impacting their payments to provide them with more certainty and increase availability of skills in the workforce.

MEDIUM

1. Reduce barriers to working more than one job, such as the secondary income tax, to increase workforce flexibility and utilisation.
2. Ensure government unemployment services are easy and accessible for employers to use to increase employment opportunities for unemployed Australians
3. Ensure government unemployment services can deliver flexible and timely solutions to clients through offering housing, uniform, training solutions, and more to overcome barriers to employment.
4. Be deliberate about removing barriers to allow more women to participate in the workforce. 

LONG-TERM

1. Improve and fund access to quality early childhood education, and before and after school care to allow more parents to return to the workforce.

Theme: Fit-For-Purpose Education and Training

SHORT

1. Transform careers education in Australia, so that it better meets the needs of students and industry, including the inclusion of career development services in the national curriculum starting from primary school. A new national approach should leverage knowledge and investment being made in the Victorian school and training system.
2. Increase government investment in strategies that keep students engaged at school, to reduce the number of school leavers without a Year 12 qualification or a training pathway, to improve employment prospects for young Australians.
3. Provide a forward plan for using microcredentials to upskill career changers to provide industry and the education sector clarity. This would include consideration of timing, funding, accreditation and the need to be agile and fit for purpose. This must augment and not detract from the current high-quality education offered in Universities and TAFEs.
4. Commit to subsidies for apprenticeships and trainees with a wage subsidy breakdown of: Year one – 25 per cent wage subsidy, Year two – 15 per cent wage subsidy, and Year three – 10 per cent wage subsidy.
5. Increase funding for VET and expand the definition of apprenticeships and trainees who can receive subsidies.
6. Establish an annual industry and education engagement summit to showcase best practice engagement and open clear and formal avenues for collaboration.
7. Dedicate funding to meet the needs of specific cohorts of learners (e.g., Australians with disability and First Nations Peoples) to increase completion rates.
8. Increase availability and reduce costs of training placements for health and community service workers to meet the significant requirements of the workforce.

MEDIUM

1. Integrate the education system and regulators across all levels so that it:
   1. Provides a single student identifier across all education levels, including school
   2. Clearly shows prior leaning history
   3. Facilitates non-linear career paths and lifelong learning.
2. Provide targeted employer support and training to increase apprenticeship completions.
3. Dedicate funding for data collection from students who withdraw or do not complete their courses to understand their reasons for not completing and to constantly evolve and tailor the supports available. 

LONG-TERM

1.  Review and remove unnecessary barriers for course entry to increase upskilling and enrolments and improve productivity. This needs to happen alongside improved engagement pre-entry to ensure people are enrolling in the right courses. 

Theme: First Nations

SHORT

1. Scale up funding for First Nations co-designed training and employment programs to ensure meaningful, fit-for-purpose solutions are delivered.
2. Dedicate funding for First Nations co-designed digital capability and readiness for future jobs for emerging technologies initiatives to meet the specific needs of First Nations communities.
3. Dedicate funding for First Nations co-designed digital access initiatives to ensure all communities have access to digital resources and infrastructure.
4. Create a fund to support access to finance and capital by First Nations individuals, communities, and organisations.
5. Establish of a First Nations Future Economy lead in government responsible for unlocking First Nations Peoples’ potential within growth and emerging industries to ensure inclusion now. 

Theme: Workplaces of the Future  

SHORT

1. Establish how the workplaces of the future (comprising of emerging industries, the modern labour market, and a highly productive economy) will navigate and address unconscious and conscious bias to women.
2. Create a plan for Australia’s renewable energy sector, including the workforce development of the necessary workers and changes in regulation to provide a forward plan of how we will create the workforce and infrastructure needed.
3. Lift the attractiveness of care economy roles to meet the current and future workforce demands.
4. Increase on-the-job training opportunities for care economy roles to boost upskilling in the workforce. 

MEDIUM

1. Create a circular economy national strategy. Align investment targets with the skills development needed, to ensure a ‘joined up approach’ in the delivery of government priorities.
2. Facilitate cross-collaboration and insight sharing between businesses to increase national productivity. 

Theme:  Regulation and Compliance

SHORT

1. Review and reduce the requirements required for industry-experienced people to become VET teachers, either full-time or part-time, to address the teacher shortages.
2. Reduce the compliance required with training product development to increase local education provider’s ability to deliver locally tailored solutions.

MEDIUM

1.  Review and reduce duplicate information within government agencies reporting requirements to save time and lift productivity.
2. Ensure there is a government commitment to a culture of regulatory reform to decrease time spent on compliance and regulation. 

Theme: Regional

SHORT

1. Ensure digital connectivity is available across the country, to facilitate education and employment opportunities for all.
2. Create a plan to solve regional housing shortages to provide the infrastructure required for regional workers. 

MEDIUM

1.  Create an Agriculture Passport to allow seasonal employees to work across different growers and farms according to seasonal demand.

Theme: Innovation and Entrepreneurship

SHORT

1. Establish a Federal Innovation Fund to help turn ideas into commercial products and services.
2. Improve access to government funding for Small, Medium and Family Enterprises (SMFEs) by simplifying Research and Development (R&D) grant processes and providing guidance when lodging applications.

MEDIUM

1. Fund formal commercialisation training to help businesses develop and find new markets for their products and services.
2. Establish sectoral-based R&D brokers to work with education research institutions and industry to identify researchers with the appropriate capabilities to solve industry problems. 

LONG-TERM

1.  Develop a comprehensive Innovation and Commercialisation (I&C) Ecosystem, similar to Silicon Valley and Boston, with wrap around services, whereby universities, research institutions, private industry and venture capital all collaborate to attract more skilled talent from around the world.
2. Establish an industry-led online marketplace that connects industry with education research institutions, product designers, and manufacturers to solve industry problems.

Appendix A

Forum attendees who contributed to the content of this Communique:

• Paul Guerra, Chief Executive Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry
• Chanelle Pearson, Chief of Staff, Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry
• Sarah Rillo, Manager Campaigns and Advocacy, Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry
• Sonja Rose, Senior Adviser, Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry
• Timothy Piper, Head Victoria, AI Group
• Matthew Hibbins, Managing Partner, Minter Ellison
• Paddy O’Sullivan, Chief Executive Officer CEO, Australian Hotels Association
• Duncan Maskell, Vice Chancellor, University of Melbourne
• Pascale Quester, Vice Chancellor, Swinburne University of Technology
• Mary Faraone, Chief Executive, Holmesglen Institute
• Louise Adams, Chief Executive Officer, Aurecon
• Sally Curtain, Chief Executive Officer, Bendigo Kangan Institute
• Matthew Everitt, Director, Dreamtime Art
• Liz Johnson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Deakin University
• Gabby O’Dwyer, Head of Government Relations and Industry, Bunnings
• Judd Young, Head of Employee Relations and Governance, Bunnings

About the Victorian Chamber

The Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) represents a network of 50,000 businesses across all sectors. Our Policy and Advocacy Team has travelled all over the state over recent months and the most consistently prevalent issues relate to jobs and skills. We know the lack of availability of labour is holding back our recovery from the pandemic. We also know we need to ensure that we are investing in the right skills so that we are in the best place to take advantage of our future economic growth.

VCCI led the Victoria Summit 2021 process last year which brought together the best and brightest individuals from the across the State to form our Reference Group and Working Groups. They were leaders with background and experience across business, unions, education, training and community. It resulted in a Playbook which articulated 189 actions to help lead Victoria out of the pandemic while also providing the foundation for future growth.

The Playbook contained a range of actions that would provide a good starting point for the Job and Skills Summit. They reflected workers, business, industry and the community, and all had input on their development. They were pragmatic in their design to enable bi-partisan support.