Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Hansard source

Exactly, what would industry know! We have already seen AWPA, the national body that was doing the analysis of emerging skills and opportunities, disbanded last year. And now we are seeing the industry skills councils, with decades of experience sitting on their boards, defunded as well.

I want to take members to this year's Environment scan from IBSA. They say—and it is absolutely true:

The impact of technology broadens each year as it is felt in all aspects of business operations, all sizes of business and all industries. Customer service is being enhanced through data analytics which are providing complex analyses of consumer behaviours, paper based printing is being subsumed by mobile electronic options, finance and business services are operating anywhere and anytime using cloud based applications on a wide variety of devices. Nationally and internationally, convergence and collaboration are occurring in the workplace and between and within industries, suppliers and clients.

That captures the very significant change that is happening not only to the nature of businesses but to the way in which businesses are operating—not only in terms of their product innovation but in the changes to the systems and procedures that workers will have to be highly competent in to guarantee productivity and innovation in the businesses of the future.

In particular they outline six significant trends that are happening. The first is extreme longevity. Reskilling will be increasingly important for all workers in the future. The second is the rise of smart machines and systems, in particular through workplace automation. The third is the computational world, where everything will be converted to data. The use of that is critically important. The fourth is new communication tools—which we would all be familiar with—that engage individually and collectively at work and at home in new and innovative ways. The fifth is superstructured organisations where the forms of production and value creation are significantly changed. The sixth is a globally connected world.

I want to particularly make the point that the Environment scans of all of these industry skills councils make the point that the vocational education and training sector is at the heart of so much of the new skilling that will have to happen. Sadly, there was not a word in the budget about initiatives in this sector. It built on the back of $2 billion cut out of the sector at the last budget. You have to invest in the workers to enable them to be the innovators and to increase their productivity for the long-term future of jobs. (Time expired)

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