DNAC Day 2: Regions key to Australia’s skills shortage
Northern Australian universities have been identified as central to meeting the country’s productivity demands, but they’ve been urged to stop churning out graduates.
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Regional and northern Australian universities have been identified as central to meeting the country’s productivity demands, but they’ve been urged to stop focusing on pumping out graduates, a conference in Cairns was told.
During a session about population and workforce strategy on day two of the Developing Northern Australia conference, Jobs and Skills Australia commissioner, Professor Barney Glover, said the nation was facing a “big gap” in qualified workforce needs.
“Productivity is driven by upskilling our workforce,” Professor Glover said.
“Within a few years, 90 per cent of all jobs are going to need post secondary qualifications – that’s a big gap to make up in this country.
“This is something that is actually better done in the regions of Australia than it is in metropolitan Australia, and that is matching the skills of the population with the jobs.
“It’s more efficient in regional Australia … regions are critical to productivity, so technology upskilling and skills matching are crucial.”
Chair of the Northern Australia Universities Alliance – featuring James Cook University, CQUniversity and Charles Darwin University – Professor Scott Bowman echoed Professor Barney’s views, quoting his colleague’s statement: “Without a strong northern Australia, you don’t have a strong Australia.”
He said one of the “greatest challenges” holding back northern Australia becoming stronger was its workforce and called on universities and training organisations to look beyond achieving increasing enrolment numbers.
“We can churn out thousands of engineers. We can, through our TAFE operations, churn out thousands of plumbers and carpenters,” he said
“But what’s the point if they’re not work ready?
“We have a great responsibility not just to train people for the sake of it, but to actually train the people that are going to be useful for northern Australia.”
Professor Bowman said First Nations people were underused as a workforce resource and called for changes to the delivery of education for Indigenous Australians and for employers to adopt a “two-way” learning model.
“We can’t just go in there and impose a western approach to First Nations learning,” he said.
“Sadly, even though we pay a lot of lip service to that, I honestly think we still do it an awful lot.
“People that are really doing well with employing First Nations people, they’re successful because it’s actually the employers that have done the learning.
“It’s not just the First Nations people who have gone out and learned skills, it’s actually the employer has learned that you’ve got to learn, really, how to work with First Nations people.”
Regional Development Australia North Queensland outgoing chief executive Wayde Chiesa presented the organisation’s Workforce Environmental Scan 2025-29 report which identified 41,000 workers would be needed in five years to meet the region’s upcoming pipeline of projects.
The report estimated the energy, mining and defence industries would draw the majority of those workers, with skills in construction trades making up the highest demand as the pipeline of project builds is estimated to peak in 2027.
Originally published as DNAC Day 2: Regions key to Australia’s skills shortage
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