Mining and Automotive Skills Alliance

DR ELIZABETH GIBSON, General Manager of the CMPA, provides an insight on MASA, who is responsible for the RII training package.

Jobs and Skills Councils (JSCs) have been established by the Australian Government to provide industry with a strong, more strategic voice in ensuring Australia’s VET sector delivers better outcomes for learners and employers. The JSA covering the extractive industry is the Australian Mining and Automotive Skills Alliance. Some bright spark in the Federal Government felt these two industries (Mining and Automotive) were aligned in their skill sets due to lithium being used for electric car batteries. The extractive industry has at present very little visibility in AUSMASA to date during its initial establishment. However, the mining Strategic Advisory Workforce Panel has only had its first meeting late last year of which I am a panel member who will endeavour to raise the profile of the extractive industry within the Alliance in 2024.

The Initial Workforce Plan – The Future is Now (November 2023, https://ausmasa.org.au/workforce-plan) offers an initial scan of the Australian automotive and mining sectors.
For ease of reading, the Plan has been broken into sections:

• Economic Background
• Education Profile
• Automotive Industry Scan
• Mining Industry Scan
• Trends and Priorities
• The Future

“One of the quarrying industry’s workforce retention challenges is the potential loss of workers to either the coal and/or metalliferous mining sector or the construction industry (especially civil). While the industry cannot necessarily compete with the wages paid by larger mining operations, it can offer a unique opportunity to work in the extractive industry closer to home and generally without shift work.”

Table 1 gives the commencements and completion rates for 2022 RII surface extraction operations training packages. Some of the training packages have been superseded but still have enrolments under that package. It is clear from the data that completion rates are very low in comparison to enrolments.

Table 1. Training Package Enrolment Data 2022

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