RA CEO Michael Kilgariff was part of an Infrastructure Roundtable held in Sydney on Friday, 19 August in the lead up to the Federal Government’s Jobs and Skills Summit.
The meeting was convened by The Hon Catherine King MP, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, in order to hear directly from peak industry bodies about the challenges currently being confronted in the delivery of infrastructure projects.
RA referenced the Infrastructure Australia Market Capacity Report that was released by Infrastructure Australia last year, which pointed to a looming skilled shortfall of 100,000 people.
We reinforced many of the recommendations contained in our recent submission to the independent review being undertaken of Infrastructure Australia, including the need for a transparent national pipeline of funded projects to allow better workforce planning, and the need to attract and retain people from diverse backgrounds to ensure the industry has a viable workforce.
The Jobs and Skills Summit will be an important opportunity to develop policy frameworks that will allow industry to address the immediate challenges to deal with skills shortages (in particular), but also to put into place policy reforms that can help ensure the current challenges are less acute in the future.
RA looks forward to working collaboratively with allied industry partners to help ensure these reforms can be achieved, for the benefit of our industry and the wider community.
