MARITIME Industry Australia says ensuring strategic maritime skills should be a priority for the re-elected Coalition government.
In a statement congratulation Prime Minister Morrison and Deputy Prime Minister McCormack, MIAL chief executive Teresa Lloyd said significant momentum had developed in recent years over the need to secure Australia’s strategic maritime skills, an issue acknowledged by the Deputy Prime Minister in his forward to the 2018 Skills Census.
“MIAL has continued to work on this issue since our national conference last year and we look forward to updating the Deputy Prime Minister on our progress and to implementing strategies and programs to overcome the nations looming shortfall,” Ms Lloyd said.
She said other issues MIAL were keen to discuss was the “untenable” state of the Seacare scheme; action in the domestic commercial vessel space to clarify requirements and establish an equitable cost recovery regime; and finding alternate sources of funding for the national biosecurity levy.
Skills shortage – well the reason why this has happened is that the training costs are born by the seafarers and not the employers particularly when revalidating certificates. Even a two day STCW refresher course costs over $1500 .
So it is time for the training organisations to stop taking advantage of this and reducing their costs. Its cheaper to fly to Singapore and do the courses there than undertake them here in Aus.
I heard that Teresa Lloyd was going to work for Albanese as an advisor in the new “Labor Government” – clearly a lot of backtracking and denial has had to take place.