Topics: Skilled migrants critical in the mining industry, skilled migration pathways, home grown skill sets
E&OE
MIKKI CUSACK: Now, Australia’s mining industry is saying skilled migrants are critical to filling these work gaps and keep major projects moving despite only making up just over one per cent of the workforce.
Tania Constable is the Chief Executive Officer at Minerals Council of Australia. Tania, good morning.
TANIA CONSTABLE: Great to be with you, Mikki, good morning.
MIKKI CUSACK: Oh, I love your energy, you’re great for breakfast radio, ready to go.
TANIA CONSTABLE: I hope so. Let’s see how we go.
MIKKI CUSACK: Now can you explain to me, if skilled migrants make up that 1.24 per cent of the mineral workforce, why are they so critical to the industry?
TANIA CONSTABLE: They’re really important to the industry because they represent those skills that we are not seeing coming through fast enough in Australia. They are the engineers, they’re the trade professionals that we have, diesel mechanics, people that are experienced in data‑driven occupations that we’re now seeing being rolled out across the Pilbara.
So we’re not replacing some of our people fast enough in Australia, so the skilled migrant pathways that we have are really critical to ensuring that we have the right people at the right time in the right places, including the Pilbara, which is so important to Western Australia and the rest of Australia.
MIKKI CUSACK: And you mentioned quickness there. What is wrong with the current system? Why can’t we have those skilled tradies, why is it so slow here?
TANIA CONSTABLE: Well, we do have specialist streams within our migration policies, and there is a core stream that relates to about 30 minerals‑related occupations – it’s well targeted, but it does have structural weaknesses. We see a lack of administrative staff looking after these migration pathways, we’re not addressing credential recognition fast enough, the processing times need to be faster, and if you don’t have those things coming together quickly, then, as I said, you’re not getting the right people at the right time in the right places in Australia.
So that’s one of the things that we want to see addressed as fast as we possibly can.
MIKKI CUSACK: And then what impact are those shortages having on say big-scale mining projects, especially in the Pilbara?
TANIA CONSTABLE: Well, we have a strong pipeline of projects that we want to see coming through, the iron ore expansion’s coming through, we’ve got critical minerals projects, we’ve got gold projects that are further out in the area.
So we’re seeing increased demand for engineering, technical and specialist roles, but they do have a broader economy‑wide impact if we don’t see those skillsets, because everybody is vying for some of these skills. Automation is starting to occur across a whole range of industries, digital technology’s putting pressure on demand for engineers, analysts and technicians, particularly across the Pilbara, particularly because we’re seeing competition across companies, and you know, we need to see the replacement in our industry occurring.
If I think about the next couple of years, or the next three years, we know that we’ve got a projected growth around our mining engineers, we expect to see about 2,000 mining engineers and metallurgists, we need 3,000 production managers, almost 4,000 automation control and processing engineers, and more than 4,000 mechanical and diesel fitters that are going to be needed just in the next few years.
So those trends reinforce the need to strengthen the pipeline of skilled workers that we have across those disciplines. So we need to home-grow people, and we do agree, and we put into a submission to the Federal Government that there should be a focus on what we can grow in Australia, but it’s still not going to be enough.
We’re putting out hundreds of people within these occupations in our universities and trade sector, but we need thousands over the next few years. So you can’t close off those skilled migration pathways and just focus on home growing them in Australia, you need to do a combination of both.
MIKKI CUSACK: You mentioned, you know, the risks to the broader economy that having this gap is. How do you measure that risk?
TANIA CONSTABLE: We do workforce planning, we look at the economic contribution that our projects are making, we look at the pipeline of projects that are coming through that we need to make sure we get on the ground, because if those things don’t occur, then it affects the whole economy because there are plenty of jobs within the mining industry. 1.25 million people are employed in the project pipeline within Australia, the mining project pipeline within Australia, and about 300,000 of those people are in jobs that are directly related to mining, but it’s a much bigger picture.
So if we don’t get these things right we don’t get the jobs that we need in our projects, things slow up, revenue is not provided to governments, and importantly, every household benefits from the mining industry because we have services like the police, the teachers, the ambulances, the firefighters, the schools, a whole range of services that are provided are provided through the revenues that our taxes provide and the mining industry provides in taxes, royalties, community benefits.
So they’re some of the ways that are going to impact directly on the economy, and you know, there’s much, much greater impacts, what we call spillover effects in other parts of the economy when you don’t get some of the fundamentals right, like the mining industry, which is right at the top of the tree; you start with mining, and then because we’re so good at it in Australia, we are so good at it in the Pilbara, we must get that right, and then other parts of the economy start to flow much better than they otherwise would.
MIKKI CUSACK: You’re on ABC Radio. My name’s Mikki, and my guest is Tania Constable. She’s the Chief Executive Officer at the Minerals Council of Australia.
Now Tania, we’ve spoken, okay, about all of that. What exactly can we do about it and what specific changes would you like to see at a government level?
TANIA CONSTABLE: Well, we want to see some change occurring at a government level. I want to make sure that we are seeing faster timeframes in terms of the skilled migration pathway in processing coming through, we need to make sure that we’ve got workforce planning occurring across a whole range of industries so that industries are not stealing from one another, because that is a real risk. When you look at manufacturing, mining, defence, and construction – they’re going to be some of the industries vying for the skills that I mentioned. The skills, anything data‑driven, our engineers and those are the sorts of occupations that will flow across those other industries.
So workforce planning is really, really critical. We need to make sure that we have the right sort of retention and regional focus occurring across Australia. We can’t lose sight of the fact that regional Australia is important, so governments must recognise that these skills need to come into places like the Pilbara, so we have, again, the jobs on the ground for our projects.
We need to make sure that we’re activating existing talent and talent pathways, and I think some countries, like Canada and Singapore, are doing a really good job of that, we can emulate some of those types of lessons from other countries because they have been using, a country like Canada has increasingly used targeted draws for their in‑demand occupations, which relate to data‑driven occupations.
So selecting people that will relate directly to some of the occupations that we’ve mentioned, that I’ve just mentioned for the mining industry and other industries are going to be really important. Faster recognition of skills and process and enabling people that might have studied in other countries to do shorter courses to get involved in what might be a cultural understanding of what we might be doing in Australia, those things are really important for people to be able to fit in, and again, I think that other countries, we can learn from their lessons.
But also, we recognise that partnering with groups like Engineers Australia within Australia is also something that needs to be done by the mining industry and other industries to tap into what skills there might be here right now. So it’s a combination of both, we don’t see just skilled migration or home growing our people because we are not going to get success through just doing one or another, it has to be both.
But what we do want from Government is not just prioritising the home grown skills, because it means we won’t get projects on the ground and we need those skilled migration pathways to remain open so we can access them for, as I said, what we might see as new projects in the future, but we can’t lose sight of the fact that as people retire we need to replace the skills that are already in place.
So again, there are many thousands of new jobs that are coming forward, and we intend to work with our university sector, with our trades, with other industries and unions to make sure that we get the people we need for our industry, and Pilbara people will be at the forefront of that, the whole region of the Pilbara will be at the forefront of that.
MIKKI CUSACK: It’s a fascinating conversation, because there’s so many different elements with that. I wonder if you’re mentioning how you’re learning the lessons from say like Canada and what not, who are you speaking to directly in countries like that, or are you just researching it?
TANIA CONSTABLE: Well, we speak directly with participants in the industry, some of our companies are participating in other countries around the world. Canada is a country we always stay in touch with. We in the Minerals Council of Australia work directly with our counterpart over in Canada, the Mining Association of Canada, to understand what each other is doing. And we work on areas that we all have concerns on, and skilled people and skilled migration are two of those areas that are really important to every country around Australia.
So we have many conversations with people in those other countries. Importantly though, we work very closely with our own governments across Australia, with our own partners, state chambers across Australia to make sure that we are looking at needs very holistically and trying to home grow as fast as we can and then utilise skillsets from overseas where we do have shortages, and it’s going to be important to keep those open.
MIKKI CUSACK: Tania, thank you so much for your time this morning.
TANIA CONSTABLE: Thank you for having me, great to be with you Mikki.
