With Australia, to use the succinct words of Malcolm Turnbull, “mugged by reality” on nuclear submarine construction by the United States, once again the implausible nature of the AUKUS agreement to deliver nuclear vessels to Australia is in the spotlight.
Part of the problem for the US construction program even before AUKUS was the extent to which labour shortages were slowing construction on new vessels. The Pentagon’s recent National Defense Industrial Strategy identified workforce shortages as a continuing problem and forecast the US would need an additional 117,000 workers over the next decade. Luckily, there’s the other AUKUS party, the Brits… except their defence and aviation sectors are plagued by a lack of skilled workers too. As is the French defence industry, from which we were previously attempting to buy boats. As is the rest of Europe.
The other problem never addressed in the AUKUS debacle was where we’d get the submariners to crew the nuclear boats from, as they require much bigger crews. There were already concerns we wouldn’t have enough crews for the French boats, based on recent years when Royal Australian Navy boats sat in drydock due to lack of crews, as part of a long-running problem of lack of Australian Defence Force recruitment.
Australia also faces a serious shortage of cybersecurity workers, in both government and the private sector, according to last year’s cybersecurity strategy.
But labour shortages are a problem right across the economy, not just in defence and the defence industry. We recently significantly increased remuneration for aged care workers in an effort to address decades-long workforce shortages in that sector — the aged care royal commission warned that we’d need an additional 130,000 aged care workers over coming decades just to maintain the existing, sub-standard system. This week’s aged care taskforce warned that changing demographics were “creating significant ongoing challenges to delivering quality care”.
Labour shortages in the broader health sector are not as bad as they used to be, but in regional areas, and in specific areas like mental health, there are serious shortfalls in skilled workers. The shortage of childcare workers is the biggest crisis in that industry. The health and care workforce is not only by far the largest employing sector in the economy but the fastest growing, and needs to continue to grow rapidly to keep up with demand from an ageing population and rising female participation.
The latest assessment of our infrastructure capacity released in December found a national shortage of public infrastructure workers numbering 229,000 and concluded the shortfall would persist above 200,000 for years to come. Last year, the engineering peak body warned of an emerging engineering skills crisis. Plans to accelerate the construction of housing to meet the ongoing crisis are plagued by labour shortages, with developers saying there just aren’t enough workers to meet government goals. The clean energy transition? That too will be plagued by labour shortages. Meanwhile, we’re regularly warned of a worker shortage in the agriculture and horticulture sectors (oddly enough, since they’re Australia’s most abusive and exploitive industries).
Despite many of our key industries facing labour shortages, policymakers are still stuck in a mindset that the benefit of any policy can be measured in the number of new jobs it creates and new industries it encourages. Labor is obsessed with a return to heavy and complex manufacturing, peddling the idea of subsidising our way to becoming a “clean energy superpower” and a battery manufacturer, along with wasting taxpayer money on building trains here that can be built far cheaper elsewhere. The Coalition, with its inane nuclear power policy, wants to embark on an entirely new industry we currently don’t have and don’t need.
Instead of politicians being allowed to talk about how many jobs will be created, the media should be challenging them on where the workers will come from. Will they simply rely on our female participation rate continuing to increase in defiance of demographic trends? Or will they rely on immigration? Every new industry policy and taxpayer-funded project should prompt the question “which country will you import the labour from and how many migrants will you need?”
In fact, instead of an industry policy, we need an anti-industry policy — one that identifies which industries we need to discourage in order to free up workers for defence, infrastructure, aged care, childcare, and for building homes. It could start with a commitment not to waste taxpayer money on pipedreams like nuclear power or battery manufacturing. Then it could identify industries that we need to shrink. Some suggestions:
- The gambling industry: In 2021, the Australiasian Gambling Council claimed gambling employed over 200,000 workers (in fact, they’re mostly bar and wait staff employed by pubs and clubs with gambling in them). Those alleged 200,000 people, freed up and retrained, could move to higher-paying, higher-skilled jobs in industries that actually add value to the Australian economy and society, rather than degrade it.
- The consulting industry: While currently shrinking due to the federal government turning away from relying on consultants, one source claims over 160,000 people work in consulting. Imagine freeing up over 100,000 skilled, tertiary-qualified workers for more useful activities than selling the same PowerPoint presentations and managerialist inanities over and over?
- Financial services: Financial services employs over 560,000 people. A substantial proportion of those, however, work in sub-industries that have inserted themselves between Australians and their money — financial advisers, bankers, dealmakers, brokers and other ticket clippers who extract substantial fees from our $3.5 trillion superannuation industry without providing any service of actual value — though that doesn’t stop them being lionised in the media.
The serious point behind this is that workforce shortages will be a persistent feature of Western economies going forward. But policymakers, and the media, are stuck in the past. “Where will the workers come from?” should be an issue for every policy idea peddled by politicians.
Which industries should be first on the chopping block for labour shrinking? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Another obvious candidate: real estate agents.
If we could only build sufficient social housing, we may be able to take enough heat out of the real estate investment Ponzi Scheme to find other employment suitable for real estate agents, such as …. Strewth! What on earth could these people usefully do?
Couldn’t agree more. A glut of real estate agents making billions selling houses, and a growing shortage of people who build actual houses. Nothing wrong with our priorities here, is there? But, as Fred Dagg once said, ‘You’re either in real estate, or you’re a fool to yourself, and a burden to others.’ In answer to your question, perhaps we could train our redundant agents as brickies labourers.
Sell bridges starting in with a large steel one in New Yorke
Naval conscription for property speculators?
Rum, buggery and the lash. That’s sort ’em.
Uhh. That would be That’d.
Still no edit button?
didn’t you get the edit memo yesterday?
Right, that should provide the crews for the subs, now who is going to build them? How about we retrain some mortgage brokers?
All I have been reading is the failure of this submarine deal. Australia is giving money to U.S to hire non exsistent workers to build submarines for Australia whereas they are so far behind building submarines for there own country!
Australia does not have the numbers in the Navy to row a viking warship.
How about we wake up to ourselves and instead of buying submarines build something in Australia and instead of wasting money on hiring Americans, hire Australians ..better the taxes stay in this country than U.S.
The issue is theres no one to hire apparently.
We used to have an automobile industry which employed hundreds of thousands. It received a piddling $500M annual subsidy which one might readily assume was well underwritten just by the income tax take from that workforce. It was a major source of education and training. It was a significant exporter of vehicle components. Thanks to T Abbott all those jobs are now in other countries. It takes generations to build things that can be destroyed overnight.
As a tradesman of 50 years I remember that the car industry was a major trainer of apprentices ALSO the PRIVATISED Government departments were a significant contributors.In SA the main trainers were Electricity trust , Engineering and water supply Dept , Public buildings Dept, SA railways ,Education dept , Hospitals depts etc . Just another example of the Failure of PRIVATISATION / CAPITALISM and the “ IF YOU ELECT THEM THEY WILL PUT UP TAXES “ “ NO WE WONT “ which has made our country go backwards to the point of seeing no way to go forward .
In Victoria it used to be that the Gas and Fuel Corp trained large numbers of apprentice plumbers. A relative was the “apprentice master” for a few years and still talks about some of their innovative work, especially around gas pipe lines.
The SEC and Telecom trained huge numbers of electricians and techicians. When tory geniuses privatised them, all the tech/tradies became self-employed with their own van but training of the next generation was moved from on the job training for school leavers to TAFE courses undertaken at your own expense with no guarantee of employment.
Gresat news if the Subs can be defaulted on. Just make sure we don’t pay USA another cent. There are many other better ways for us to secure defence of our borders – we certainly don’t need to have attack machinery to “scare” our greatest trading partner on behalf of the corrupt USA
The Swedish Gotland subs are better suited to our defensive needs. Smaller, cheaper, fewer submariners needed , less detectable and smarter
Sure they can be ‘defaulted on’. There’s nothing to default on; at this stage it’s been all talk, most of which keeps narrowing the whole thing inexorably down to the never-never. Have the Americans hired thousands more workers? No; just pulled one of their used subs out of the picture, the other soon to follow no doubt. Have the British sub designers sat down and started their doodlings? All bets are off. Have our shipyards started hiring workers? Nah, you kidding? All Albo has to do is say, ‘it’s off’ and then call the Gotland people Peter Wotton recommends below, and everyone will sigh with relief, including the Brits and Americans.
There could be a silver lining to cancelling the subs, Cap’n. That nasty little smirky fellow, the erstwhile member for Cook, was going off to do “AUKUS related work”, wasn’t he? No AUKUS – No job. I’d love so see him at Centrelink, and I’d like to create a special version of Robodebt, just for him.
‘Scomodebt’!
Please, someone show this piece to Richard Marles – or perhaps read it to him if necessary. He is in thrall of the US & is incapable of escaping from their patronising fantasies (aka the AUKUS subs deal). Reality is overdue.
Come on Zut, be reasonable as where else would Marles be fawned over and allowed into exclusive golf clubs?
He needs the adulation from somewhere
Plus he still has hopes that Pyne and Hockey will let him get his snout in the AUKUS through like they recently did with Scummo.
Prissy Pyne and Hello World Hockey, yepp the rotten apples still fall from the tree ..