Skills, education and the future workforce

The chemistry sector requires a variety of skilled employees, predominantly engineers, chemists, technicians, and other STEM-qualified individuals at VET and University achievement levels.

Like many STEM-based industries in Australia, Chemistry Australia members are finding it difficult to recruit enough suitable candidates for roles from the local talent pool and are reliant instead on skilled migration.

As Engineers Australia has pointed out, in 2021, 55.8 per cent of qualified engineers working in an engineering occupation were born overseas (The Engineering Profession: A Statistical Overview Fifteenth Edition, 2023).

While skilled migration will always remain part of the solution to the skills gap, it has also become difficult as many other countries are seeking the same skills as we need.

We need to do a better job of developing a training pipeline of skilled workers here in Australia. Core barriers to this have been identified as insufficient numbers completing STEM subjects in high school and attracting and retaining students and recent graduates in the workforce.

Currently STEM education appears to be in a decline where fewer qualified teachers are available to teach fewer students thereby perpetuating the issue.

Goverment should:

1. Work with state and territory governments, with the support of industry, to improve the teaching and uptake of STEM subjects in primary and secondary schools, including:
2. Programs that successfully encourage students to study and continue to study STEM subjects, whether they plan on undertaking VET or university-level qualifications on graduation;
3. Encouraging, financially and socially, qualified STEM professionals to transition to education to improve the numbers of skilled maths, science, technology and innovation teachers in primary and secondary schools;
4. Work with industry to promote the social benefits and improve the profile of occupations in the STEM/ chemistry industry in Australia, including for less well represented cohorts. This could include continuing CSIRO's Generation STEM or reintroducing the Women in STEM Ambassador role. This needs to be actioned across all education levels, e.g., early education, primary, secondary and tertiary; 
5. Ensure career guidance counsellors and teachers are fully aware of the opportunities that STEM will provide for future occupations through coordination between government and relevant industry associations, like Chemistry Australia. This should initially focus on low and mid-level secondary school students who are making decisions on which subjects to continue in order to increase their career options;
6. Review the need for compulsory STEM subjects in the senior secondary curriculum (e.g., mathematics) to improve the talent pipeline into university and VET STEM qualifications and to maximise career options;
7. Encourage and support the students through their post- secondary qualifications in VET or university in STEM degrees and courses, including:
   1. Work with industry to overcome financial impacts for students through:
      • Paid placements (as recently announced for students in teaching, nursing, midwife or social worker courses);
      • Consideration of providing degree apprenticeships to relevant courses;
      • Early admission; and
      • Other work integrated learning pathways.
   2. Work with universities to ensure that student places are available to prospective students;
   3. Provide funding to enable schools and universities to invest in the most up-to-date technology and infrastructure to meet the needs of employers.

Regulation

Unnecessary, inconsistent, complex, overly-burdensome and duplicated regulation adds to business costs. It is also a major disincentive to investment because it increases uncertainty and delays projects. Our members have observed that while other economies roll out the red carpet, Australia rolls out the red tape.

Unfortunately, the situation is not improving; it is getting worse as the Federal Government and different state governments seek to impose their own, often conflicting, net zero, circular economy and environmental obligations on manufacturers. A balance needs to be restored.

Government should:

1. Streamline new project approvals by consolidating federal, state and local government processes into a unified framework;
2. Prioritise manufacturing investment through an ongoing National Cabinet commitment to focus on and reduce red tape at federal, state, and local government levels. This must include eliminating duplicative regulatory schemes and requirements at all levels of government;
3. Re-establish the discipline of Regulatory Impact Statements (RIS) to ensure regulators maintain an economic lens to encourage stable, manageable, and balanced regulation that reduces costs and supports investment and economic growth;
4. Ensure that any regulatory obligations imposed under packaging reform legislation can be applied equally to imported and domestically manufactured goods to prevent disadvantaging Australian manufacturers; and
5. Streamline and modernise Australia’s biosecurity IT systems, regulations, and controls, focusing on relieving the burden on bio-based chemistry emerging as a replacement for fossil fuel-derived chemistry.