Jobs summit: Worthy idea a tough job to make practical

Participants at the Jobs and Skills Summit in Canberra on Thursday. Picture: Getty Images

The thing is, it’s much easier to sound worthy than to offer up practical ideas.

But the participants of the first day of the Jobs and Skills Summit – a talkfest in search of a purpose – had got the message. Follow the government script and worry about the details later.

One problem with the list of the attendees is that very few either have real skin in the game or are responsible for actually employing people. They are representatives of representatives.

Take the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia. They are far removed from actual small businesses, many doing it tough with rising energy bills and tighter credit. But this doesn’t stop COSBOA claiming to “represent” 600,000 small businesses.

Like the Business Council of Australia, its leadership is increasingly dominated by ­ticket-clipping professional service firms always keen on more compliance and government-imposed regulation.

As for the massive over-­representation of union officials – union membership is less than 10 per cent in the private sector and only about 14 per cent overall – it simply underlines the primary purpose of the summit: to deal the unions back into the game, notwithstanding the clear reluctance of workers to join up.

This requires preferential deals – in respect of enterprise bargaining, for instance – and there is little doubt the Albanese government will deliver down the track.

Needless to say, most of these deals will be inimical to competition and productivity growth.

Think here particularly the retrograde idea of multi-employer bargaining.

The idea of further enhancing the role of women in the workforce is another example of worthiness overriding practicality. After all, women’s workforce participation is at a historic high and the last thing many women want to do is to work more hours.

The idea of funding a longer ­period of paid parental leave to boost the economy is surely perverse. Not only does this change have to be funded (by taxpayers), it also involves women staying out of the workforce for longer.

Spending more on childcare fee relief is also unlikely to generate a large – if any – economic dividend, given the starting point. With the supply of childcare places essentially fixed in the short term, the impact of the higher subsidies that come into effect next year will be mainly just higher fees.

Unsurprisingly, virtually all summit participants are keen on the idea of taxpayers chipping in even more to subsidise training, even though it is widely acknowledged that the training system is broken. “Free” TAFE courses may sound compelling but the Victorian experiment has shown that students don’t value these courses and completion rates are very low.

Relying on TAFE is also an unattractive option, given the system’s rigidity and out-of-date offerings.

When the Incomes and Prices Accord Summit took place, there were still slews of undifferentiated jobs and large firms and public sector utilities with vast numbers of lifetime employees.

The world is now very different: global supply chains (even if they are slightly broken), technology, digitisation, automation/AI and temporary migration are the features that need to be accommodated. It’s just a pity this summit hasn’t been as forward-thinking as the one nearly 40 years ago.