Outcomes from Future Jobs Forum

Wednesday, 2 November 2011      

Section: Latest News

APESMA CEO Chris Walton recently attended the Future Jobs Forum in Canberra hosted by Prime Minister Julia Gilard.

While engineering in particular has a strong future in Australia according to all projections, Australia is not reaching its potential due to an engineering skills crisis in many areas.

Mr Walton said the meeting was a chance to convince policy makers and employers to address the skills crisis by harnessing our natural resources boom.

“Its clear that both public sector and private sector employers of engineers are both failing to give our engineers the training they need for the future,” Mr Walton said.

“With a large amount of Australia’s best engineering talent set to retire in the next few years we are going to rely on our younger engineers even more than before.

“However if we can get work for Australian engineering companies out of our natural resources boom and encourage those employers to train their engineers well, we can create jobs for Australians and help minimise the skills crisis.”

Mr Walton said the forum exceeded his expectations with all participants passionate about giving Australian firms a better chance of thriving into the future and creating more Australian jobs.

"Most speakers recognised science, technology, engineering and management was critical to Australia being innovative and productive." 

For more details about this important forum – including the presentations from the speakers Click Here.