BAILEY, Mr Patrick, National Manager, Industry Policy, Master Builders Australia BYRNE, Ms Melissa, National Director, Policy and Legal, Master Builders Australia HOLMES, Mrs Georgia, National Policy Lead, Master Electricians Australia [by video link] LADE, Mr Cameron, General Manager, Summit Homes Group WA MARTIN, Mrs Jocelyn, Managing Director, Housing Industry Association PREVEDELLO, Mr Joe, Chief Executive Officer, Master Plumbers ACT (on behalf of Master Plumbers Australia and New Zealand) SMITH, Mr Danial, General Manager, Industry Advisory and Advocacy, Master Electricians Australia [by video link] Committee met at 0 9 : 1 0 CHAIR ( Mr Georganas ): I declare open this public hearing in Canberra of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration for the inquiry into the value of skilled migration to Australia. I welcome all the witnesses appearing before the committee today, as well as members of the public and media in the room and watching online. This is the 10th public hearing for the inquiry. The committee has so far conducted public hearings here in Canberra, Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast. In accordance with the committee's resolution of 31 July 2025, this hearing will be broadcast on the parliament's website, and the proof and official transcripts of the proceedings will be published on the parliament's website. Those present here today are advised that filming and recording by the media is permitted during the hearing. However, we ask that members of the media that are present or listening online report the committee's proceedings fairly and accurately. On that note, I now welcome witnesses participating in a housing and construction roundtable to give evidence. The witnesses participating today are from the Housing Industry Association, Master Builders Australia, Master Electricians Australia and Master Plumbers Australia and New Zealand. Although the committee does not require you to give evidence under oath, this hearing is a legal proceeding of the parliament. The giving of false or misleading evidence is a serious matter and may be regarded as a contempt of parliament. The evidence given today will be recorded by Hansard and attracts parliamentary privilege. Thank you very much for your submissions and for appearing before the committee. I'll ask each group if you want to make a very short opening statement of no more than a few minutes before we proceed to the discussion. And we really want to keep the statements short so that we can have a discussion. We've got your submissions, and that's the important part; they're on the record. If we keep it short it will give everyone an opportunity to ask questions, including our colleagues who are online or on video conference. I'll hand over to whoever wants to start. Mrs Martin : I can start. Hopefully it will be short enough. I might cut a bit out. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today on behalf of the Housing Industry Association. Yesterday, Tony Burke used his National Press Club address to outline reforms to Australia's migration system and, importantly, acknowledge construction and housing delivery as priority sectors within Australia's skilled migration framework. And HIA does recognise that recognition. For some time though, HIA has argued that increasing housing supply is not simply a housing policy challenge; it's also a workforce challenge. Australia cannot achieve its housing ambitions without ensuring builders have access to the skilled workers that are needed to deliver homes. The government's recognition of construction as a priority sector is an important step forward, but the question now is how that priority is translated into practical outcomes. In our submission, we mentioned things like a dedicated housing visa strike team to identify, triage and fast-track visa applications for workers in critical housing construction occupations. Our main message today, despite yesterday's announcement, is about how difficult the system is to use and how expensive and slow it is. Today I have with me Cameron Lade from Summit Homes. Cameron will hopefully get to share with you his experience of the cost, the length of time it takes and the effect it has on his business and his productivity. I'll leave that for Cameron to unpack with you today. More broadly, we need immigration pathways that reflect the structure of Australia's residential building industry and provide a more responsive framework for attracting and retaining the skilled workers that are needed to build homes. Our submission is built around a simple proposition: if Australia is serious about increasing housing supply, then skilled migration policy must be designed and administered with that objective firmly in mind. Our submission was made in December 2025, so things have probably moved on a little bit since then in terms of our discussion. We have two messages today to bring to the major parties, particularly Liberal and Labor. You have acknowledged that there is a housing shortage in this country. We are grateful for that. You're supportive of major infrastructure projects. You want to build data centres; you're behind AUKUS and the Olympics. Communities expects schools and hospitals. But, by entering into a low-level conversation which calls out NOM numbers, you are impacting business and you're curtailing housing supply. So if it means that the NOM is higher in 12 months time because we have more construction workers, we should be celebrating. So from today, we must hope that we can start to have an intelligent conversation about what skilled workers we need to build homes and stop holding businesses to ransom over your politics. We ask for informed decision-making aimed towards a sustainable and reliable system of skilled migration, good population forecasts and, at the same time, to address barriers to housing supply. Thank you, and we look forward to your questions. CHAIR: Thank you very much, Mrs Martin. Would anyone else like to add anything? I'm going to be doing it a bit differently today. Usually we start off with the chair asking questions, but I'm aware Mr Caldwell— Ms Byrne : Am I able to make a brief opening? CHAIR: Yes, certainly. Ms Byrne : Thank you for this opportunity this morning. Obviously, skilled migration has been a hot topic this week, but we just really want to be direct about the situation that we're dealing with in this sector at the moment. We are facing a workforce crisis that is structural, not cyclical. Apprenticeship commencements are down 3.9 per cent over the last 12 months. While there are more than 100,000 construction apprentices in training, this actually represents a decline of 5.7 per cent in a single year. And while completions have improved 18 per cent over the last year to March, more are quitting during their apprenticeship than completing, which is very concerning. At the same time, our workforce is ageing. With unemployment sitting around four per cent, it means there's no latent domestic pool for us to draw on. Against this backdrop, we know the federal government's committed to delivering 1.2 million homes. But our recently released workforce blueprint projects a worker shortage of more than 900,000 workers by 2035. We are currently 141,000 workers short of current demand, and these numbers can't be reconciled with current demand for building and construction work and domestic training trajectories. While domestic reform is essential, even under optimistic assumptions it takes at least two to four years for a new apprentice to become a qualified tradesperson. We need a working skilled-migration pathway now that works as a bridge—as it does in other countries—while domestic apprenticeship reforms come online. Yet, despite current migration levels, the system is not delivering for construction. At September 2025, over 7,000 skilled visa holders were working in core construction trade occupations nationally. That's a number wholly inconsistent with the scale of the challenge. At the same time, an estimated 18,400 permanent migrants already living in Australia and holding building and construction qualifications are working below their skill levels, blocked by slow, costly and fragmented skills recognition and licensing arrangements. While the migration system was not designed to exclude construction, the framework has evolved around the needs of larger office-based employers with longer planning horizons and specialist HR capacity. It does not reflect how construction works: 98 per cent are small businesses using project based labour, with state-specific licensing and schedules that can't wait months for visa processing. Master Builders has called for a focused, practical package of reforms: things like a dedicated construction skills pathway, expanding the Pacific islands worker scheme to include non-licensed trades, an international apprenticeship pathway, reforming the Skilling Australians Fund and a national skills activation program to leverage those underutilised migrants already here. Australia can't meet its housing, infrastructure or productivity objectives without a better functioning migration system. The reforms we are proposing are practical, evidence based and deliverable, and we look forward to discussing them this morning. CHAIR: Thank you. Mr Prevedello. Mr Prevedello : Thank you, Mr Chair. Good morning to members of the committee. Master Plumbers Australia and New Zealand appreciates the opportunity to appear today. Australia's plumbing and gasfitting trade will require navigable skilled migration along with our local and robust training regime to renew talent and meet the workforce shortages in our sector in the coming years. It is critical, however, that the skilled migration pathways for our sector meet industry needs, maintain the high integrity and professionalism in the trade and the important role it plays protecting public health and ensure skills and workforce gaps are filled where required. We have 107,000 plumbers employed nationally, but we will desperately need more over the coming years. BuildSkills estimates Australia will need an additional 20,000 plumbers by 2028. This is on top of the entrance required to replace plumbers who retire or leave the industry. The MPANZ is willing to partner with government in facing the challenge of making sure we have enough new plumbers and gasfitters to support the new construction and maintenance needs of the country but especially in aiding the National Housing Accord target of building 1.2 million new homes. We believe focusing on improved pathways for experienced migrants from countries with like training regimes, developing a plumbing workforce from AI crunched vocations and reskilling gasfitters—whose profession is under threat from misguided public policy to phase out household and business access to natural gas in some jurisdictions—are major priorities. Safeguarding the integrity of the trade is paramount when reformulating the correct migration pathways. We are a licensed trade for good reason, and there are many safety and quality standards to uphold. When you're dealing with water or gasfitting, it's important that everything is done right. CHAIR: Thank you. Mrs Holmes. Mrs Holmes: Good morning to members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today to discuss skilled migration. Master Electricians Australia represents electrical contractors in an industry facing a critical and ongoing skill shortage. It has been estimated that an additional 32,000 to 42,000 electricians are required between 2023 and 2030, and this figure has recently been announced to be expected to rise. Domestic training alone will not meet this demand, given the typical four-year apprenticeship pathway and limited training capacity. Skilled migration is therefore an essential complement to our domestic workforce. Electricians are critical to delivering Australia's electrification agenda, housing, infrastructure and data centre development. Without a material increase in electricians, our capacity to deliver these priorities will be compromised. But increasing migration numbers alone will not resolve this problem. Pathways for overseas qualified electricians remains complex and inconsistent across jurisdictions. Those from countries with comparable training and licensing standards can face lengthy supervision requirements before they can work unsupervised. The system is also difficult for employers to navigate. For our members, many of whom are small businesses, sponsorship costs and administrative requirements can make recruiting skilled migrants difficult and expensive. MEA is calling for a dedicated construction trade skilled migration pathway for workers from comparable jurisdictions, supported by a nationally consistent gap training and supervision requirements. This would enable qualified tradespeople to enter the workforce sooner without compromising competency or safety standards. Skilled migration is not a substitute for apprenticeships or investment in our domestic workforce. It is a necessary complement, and we need a system that gets appropriately skilled workers into the industry safely and efficiently. Thank you for your time. We look forward to the questions. CHAIR: Thank you. I know Mr Caldwell has to leave. That's why I'm eager to get him to ask his questions. Then we can come back to Mr Lade for your story that Mrs Martin told us that you wanted to tell us. Mr CALDWELL: I have two interrelated questions. Can you just explain the skills-in-demand specialist stream exclusions for certain workers. Does this have an impact on what skilled migrants can be recruited into the construction industry? Secondly, do you believe that you could recruit more highly skilled trades if this exclusion were removed? That question is really to the panel at large, whoever might have some input on that. Mr Bailey : The pathways into construction from a skilled migrant perspective are quite difficult and tiresome, particularly if they're coming through on an employer sponsored visa, because you have the employer who has to put up the costs to bring them in. If you go through as a small business looking to get a concreter or a carpenter or an electrician or a plumber, the cost can be quite significant. If they're an unlicensed trade, then you're looking at around $46,000 if you use an agent, and that takes at least nine to 12 months, usually longer, depending on whether the migrant had been here before or whether they are coming in completely new. Those sorts of timelines just don't match up with the construction reality. For a house, you already have to have finished building that house by the time the application gets to a point where you know an outcome. That is a real barrier. So, when we're looking at a construction visa framework, what we're looking to do is align the project arrangements with the processing arrangements and reduce some of the costs so that we can get people in faster and get them building houses and infrastructure and commercial and civil faster. Ms Byrne : The way the prioritisation is at the moment is certainly not supporting those objectives. It's making it harder to get skilled trades into the country. Certainly our position has been that that arrangement be revised. Mr CALDWELL: That's all from me. Apologies, I've got to zip upstairs. Thank you. CHAIR: We'll now go to Mr Lade for his story. Mr Lade : I guess I'm telling the story of what it's really like at the coalface. Our experience is that, being in Western Australia, we have a very competitive workforce. We're a mining state, which tends to draw a lot of our workers into that sector. We have a lot of infrastructure projects underway. We have AUKUS underway. We've got a new airport coming through. So the residential industry really suffers from a lack of tradespeople. From our perspective—and we've got quite a significant housing shortage—there's absolutely no way that builders in WA can deliver the housing requirement without having to supplement—and I like the word 'complement'. It is supplementing our trade base. From our perspective, we're a volume builder. We've been able to move from about 1,600 starts to 2,000 starts this year with part of the program that we have in place, which is 100 overseas workers, but we're looking to grow that by 25 per cent to 2,500 starts by increasing our program, which has unfortunately been on pause since 25 July. It's put our planning way behind. The main concern with this is that it is interconnected with everything else that we talk about. It's supply. It's affordability. It's about productivity. In construction, it's all about being able to deliver housing in a timely manner, because the longer it takes, the tighter the margins become. As we know, that's a big thing for builders in terms of making sure that we stay sustainable through that process. To give you an idea, pre-COVID, an average build time was about 28 weeks. During the home building stimulus and COVID, that blew out to 68 weeks. We've only been able to get it back to about 38 weeks, so we're still well behind timeframes, which is obviously not helping our clients. It's impacting on the cost. We've got this tension between providing affordable homes—because, as a project builder, we just want to deliver homes quickly, affordably and efficiently. A big component of our clients are first home buyers. Everything that the government is trying to achieve at the moment is linked back to labour. Labour is our single biggest drawback to being able to deliver housing, so we've made the decision to do it. It's not a cheap investment. It's $30,000 per worker to bring them in. We go through a rigorous trade testing process. Our construction people go over. At the moment we're focusing on the Philippines. We put them through their paces through trade testing. We interview them. We conduct a driving test. We only pass about 40 per cent of those trade tests to come into Australia. Once they come into Australia, we then embark upon our own training program. The thing that impresses us is that our local trades are very embracing, because it's helping support them, because they're under pressure to deliver housing. Nobody wants to take a long time to build a home. It's all about getting in and getting out. We measure our businesses—all of the builders—in terms of the number of white days; that's the number of days that we don't have any trade on site. That is significant. You drive around the suburbs of Perth—and, I suspect, other states, like Queensland, which are quite busy—and there's just no trade on site at all. Our responsibility is to be able to improve that. There is no other pathway. We have apprenticeship programs. We have our own plumbing apprentices. We embrace our local trade base. We talk to the fact that it is not replacing them; it is supplementing them. We guarantee them that they will have work for at least the next five years, without any change really in terms of the demand for housing. From our program's point of view, the biggest drawback is that it is time consuming. It's quite a process to bring them in. Part of the challenge, I guess, particularly with certain countries where English is not the first language, is the requirement to be able to either sit an English exam or demonstrate secondary and tertiary education. That is a real challenge because, obviously, skilled tradespeople don't necessarily go down an education pathway. It's the same in our own country. To expect these guys to be able to speak perfect English is a real challenge. Being able to balance their technical capability with their ability to speak English is holding back our volume of tradespeople that we can bring in. From our perspective, this is the way forward for the residential construction industry. Again, I think, looking at it state by state, having a plan in place to actually acknowledge that different states require different solutions, is certainly something that we would support. Our state government is very proactive. They actually have a visa subsidy program in place, because they can see firsthand that it's holding us back. Our business is very diversified. We build detached housing, we build medium-density housing, we build renovations and we have a modular business. Our modular business is really critical to providing key worker accommodation in the regions in Western Australia. We have a lack of housing for our teachers, nurses and law enforcement. Being able to have sufficient labour to be able to build our modular business, to be able to help deliver housing in the regions, is a really critical component. It's a real shortage. Again, it's just driving up prices because it becomes the old supply and demand. You know—the less supply, the higher the demand, the higher prices go. Our goal, as I said, doesn't change. Our agenda is really simple: fast, affordable and efficient housing, by having a workforce, which I would suggest for us, at about 10 per cent. So we're talking about 250 to 300 overseas skilled workers to supplement our trade base of 2,500. That's all we're really asking for. CHAIR: I might kick off just with a couple of questions and some clarifications as well. One is on the apprentices, and another is on the ticking off on trade skills. In terms of a lot of the overseas workers that do come in—perhaps electricians from the Philippines or from other countries—language obviously is a problem. To tick off their written test and language test is very difficult. I know this firsthand. I've seen people who work for electricians and who are great electricians, but, because of the English language and written tests, they're still working as a labourer for electricians. I know people that have been 30, 40 years in the industry that have been doing exactly that because they cannot read and write. They can speak, but they've always had difficulty reading and writing. They came out at a different time; there were different rules et cetera, but, in terms of the urgency that now faces us, what can we do to streamline those people into the roles of assisting with the building of housing, construction, and the labour that we really need? Some find it so difficult they'll never be able to do a written test or perhaps a language test, but they're magnificent tradespeople. Mr Lade : Absolutely. It takes time. We've obviously thought about a whole range of things in terms of education and putting them through English training. But you're right: it is the timeframe, and it is an urgent situation now. Obviously fast tracking the visa timeframes is critical, but also not having the same rigour around that English component would be really helpful. For us, we focus on the Philippines because they tend to be very likeminded in terms of— CHAIR: And their English is pretty good. Mr Lade : Their English is not too bad. Let's face it. From a builder's perspective, we take safety critically, so we have translation; we translate all of our safety documents into Tagalog. We have a Filipino person doing our toolbox meetings. There's no shortcut, from our perspective, around making sure that things run safely and to a certain quality. When you get a certain scale of the number of workers, you can integrate your team who have perhaps less English capability into a team that has good English capability. When we have that scale, we feel that English becomes less important than it is to actually have that technical capability. Again, we have to deliver homes to a certain standard, and we take responsibility for that. These people are directly employed for our business. So that technical component is more important. What we're feeling at the moment is that it's almost like you have to have the English first, then the technical, when, let's face it, this is a skills thing; it's not about English. Our own labour force doesn't necessarily have a skilled point of view. This is nothing really different to what's been happening across the country forever. We've relied on overseas skilled people to help build the country. The Europeans built a post-Second World War. You go on to any building site, it's multilingual. They all get on, and they're able to navigate through all the different requirements that they need. Mr Smith : To add to that from an electrical perspective, I have a construction background; I've worked in the construction industry for 27 years. Prior to this, in a previous business—to complement what we were just talking about, the Filipino workforce and the electrical workforce is fantastic. Putting them into groups of teams exactly like we were just talking about, especially in the electrical workspace, works really well because they do have a good grasp of the English language. It can be done; it definitely can be. The main thing that we need to make sure is that our safety procedures are not compromised in that. It would generally mean that our procedures, our processes, our on-site controls, would actually need to cater for non-English speaking workers, which is able to be done these days relatively easily. It's not to remove the requirements for individual trades assessments to get skilled migrants into Australia but to just say that, yes, it can be done; it just needs to be done properly. CHAIR: Would you like to add anything? Ms Byrne : I think the solution is quite straightforward on this issue. It's so inflexible. Why are we applying the same standard of English proficiency across multiple different trades that require different levels of proficiency, particularly for non-licensed trades? Obviously, safety is paramount, so certainly being able to speak and understand is critical. But for a non-licensed trade, why are they sitting for a written English test when their ability to contribute is about on-site work? CHAIR: It's more about practical. Ms Byrne : That's right—rather than having to sit and do an English language test. If we can think about things a little bit more flexibly, we can meet the sector's needs and not exclude a whole range of perfectly capable and technically trained people who can contribute practically on site. CHAIR: And that would have to be obviously without diminishing any of the safety. Ms Byrne : Absolutely. CHAIR: For the apprenticeship scheme, the retention numbers—getting more people through trade schools, apprenticeships et cetera—I have a bit of firsthand knowledge. I've got a son who's a master plumber and he's had issues. He cannot get apprentices. He's now going through the housing industry, I think, and it's working much better for him. What's the solution to that, because it's always been an issue? I suspect it's because when you get a first-year apprentice, productivity is very low in the first year. They're out buying sandwiches and getting coffees for the rest of the workshop, or sleeping on the floor, so the productivity is very low. I can understand that. But some countries have a system where they go through trade school for a year and then come out with knowledge and practical skills, so they immediately become productive when taken on as an apprentice. Do you have any thoughts on how we can improve that retention? It's one thing for governments to open up positions, and there are over 100,000 TAFE places, but how do we get them to stay? Mrs Martin : Certainly, you've recognised that retention is a significant issue, particularly in the non-licensed trades around carpentry and so forth. You also identified that there's no easy answer. One of the things that we advocate for strongly are VET in school programs that give students the opportunity to try a trade or do their certificate II program, perhaps, while they're still at school. Not everybody is on an academic pathway, and some people want to experience that. There are some successful state programs that have been in place to bring along VET in schools. Our problem is there's no consistency. Those things go from funding program to funding program to funding program and they kind of never quite gather a long-term momentum, so what we'll always be looking for is that kind of long-term commitment to the VET in school programs that can support the students to try a trade or to step out of school. It's also actually not logistically very easy sometimes within the school system, so perhaps some things need to change there in terms of scheduling and so forth so that those students can be a little bit more available. But then, as you identified, apprentices are quite young and they're heading straight into the world of work as well as the world of study, and that's not necessarily the case for a university student who has a lot of time in the world of study before they actually head into it. They're quite young, so that's why mentoring programs and the support for the employer or through the GTO group training organisations become really, really important. For us operating a GTO, we offer a lot of mentoring and support—apprentices who lose their driver's license, for instance. They've got it all going on at that age as well. They're entering into that world of work—getting up early and so forth. This is why we've got to recognise an apprenticeship as a three-way arrangement. It's an arrangement between the training institution and the student themselves, but the employer also plays a really important part in it. That's what an apprenticeship is. It's on-the-job training, and we're constantly looking for recognition of the time that an employer, particularly a small business, takes out of their work day to support that apprentice. It's really important and a really important recognition. The retention in GTOs does tend to be better than direct indenture, but, certainly, even those employers that directly indenture will tell you how much work needs to go in to support the apprentices experience, as well as work in order to retain them in the system as well. So there are a lot of different things that need to be at play. As an industry, I believe we need to take more responsibility as well. We need to work harder to equip our builders to understand how to look after those apprentices in the workplace. I think that's something that we take on as an industry to actually try and educate our employers and support them in how to work with young people and how to introduce them to the world of work and the expectations they have around that. Ms Byrne : Chair, I might add to that if I can. About a week and a half ago, we released a workforce blueprint. We can share that with the committee afterwards. That's got 32 recommendations about a range of options to support attraction, retention and completion across the whole life cycle of an apprentice, because there are challenges at every stage, and how you attract and how you keep them sticky during that apprenticeship as well is quite challenging. Given the scale of the shortages that we're looking at, we wanted to make sure that we had some solid recommendations, including support for group training organisations and other funding incentives, through payroll tax exemptions and things like that, to target all the different parties involved during that training life cycle. CHAIR: Thank you. Deputy Chair. Mr REBELLO: Firstly, you've spoken about the link between the domestic training sector and the international migration side of things. With respect to training Australians, can you explain to the committee the impact of the government's cuts to employer incentives on the building sector? In particular, I'm interested in the practical impact that this is having on construction viability. Mr Prevedello : I'd like to echo what Mrs Martin and also Ms Byrne have said around the importance of the employer in the development of apprentices. It's very, very important. Without the employer taking a punt, taking a risk, on a good, generally young person you're not going to be able to develop that skill set and that lifelong profession. All of the aspects—the trade school, the GTO, the TAFE, wherever—have to work with the employer and of course the apprentice who is there in the middle of it and need to make a real fist of it. But there's no doubt that there is an aversion by some employers to take on apprentices because those incentives that were being offered have been taken away now. I can speak anecdotally from my own jurisdiction's experience. I get a lot of employers asking me if I can find them qualified tradespeople to take on because the incentive just isn't there to take on younger people. It's not that they don't want to bring new people in and skill them up. It's more that pressure on business is such that you look for the best way for you to get through it for your business. It's just the reality of life. So I think it would be beneficial if some of those incentives could be revisited and looked at as a priority going forward as we try to fill these shortages that we're trying to meet. Mr REBELLO: On that, was there any consultation or warning of it? Did you know that it was coming? Mrs Martin : We certainly knew that the current incentive structure was expiring. It was essentially expiring in December last year, and we had no certainty beyond that. The problem, first of all, is that you've got a 3½- or four-year apprenticeship and you are at a critical time where you're trying to recruit school leavers in December and to plan for next year. So, without that certainty, that was the first thing. We were quite fortunate, in the end, to receive a higher subsidy for construction than perhaps some other sectors were, but there's still no certainty. The period is another 12 months, and we're just sort of hopping along. If you were a small business employing an apprentice, you could potentially have apprentices in each of the years on different subsidies and be doing different claims and making claims against state based programs and federal programs. By employing an apprentice you're actually creating more administration for yourself, in the end, by having to claim some of these incentives. So recognising construction to provide that incentive for employers was welcomed, but it still was very last minute, and it still provides us with no certainty—and they're changing the structure around it, as well. I think that's probably what we're seeking, too: being able to anticipate how we can support an apprentice for the entirety of their apprenticeship and recruit in advance, as well. Ms Byrne : We were very disappointed with those cuts, particularly in an environment where the federal government is suggesting they are supporting the delivery of housing. They've set a 1.2 million homes target, yet at the same time they're cutting support to a critical aspect of delivering on those targets. That's part of the reason we put together our workforce blueprint. Some of the recommendations in there go to those funding incentives. We can't be naive about it costing an employer money to engage an apprentice. It's not only financial cost; it's time and energy cost. And, without those incentives, there is less incentive for an employer who is just trying to run a business. Profit margins are slim. Project feasibility is not stacking up anymore. When you are considering your pipeline of work and what you need, an apprentice—at this point, given the market currently—is probably not going to stack up. Those incentives are critical to those decision-making processes. Mrs Holmes: I might speak on behalf of the electricians. Our members are largely small and medium electricians. The small businesses take on about 50 per cent of the commencement of apprenticeships in the electrical industry, so this has come as a huge shock to our members. They're obviously not thrilled. It's very expensive to run the apprentices, as pretty much everyone here has said. We have a ballpark figure—it is very anecdotal at this stage—of about $250,000 across an apprenticeship. That includes non-financial commitments as well, like unbillable hours and opportunity costs et cetera. We're also constantly hearing of instances of poaching from larger companies, especially on government projects. They will come in and take the apprentices when they're in their third or fourth year, after they've completed their first and second year when it's the most expensive and the most time-consuming. So our members are managing risk with really high costs, and this reduction in incentive has come as a shock. State governments—not all of them—are not providing much or any support, either. The biggest concern that we're hearing back from our members is that they're going to have to look at cutting their apprenticeships. It's a real risk for productivity in an industry that's already facing an ongoing critical skills shortage. Mr REBELLO: Thank you. CHAIR: Ms Miller-Frost. Ms MILLER-FROST: Thank you all very much for your time and submissions. It's been very helpful. Coming from South Australia, I certainly understand what you're talking about around the competition for trades. We also have a lot of infrastructure, and we've got AUKUS. I hear from all of my small businesses that they are losing local workers to these big, very well-paid government infrastructure projects, and then your housing industry or manufacturing industry can't get a tradie. I completely understand where you're coming from there. I want to get back to the migration part of this. We have Filipinos coming in. We've heard that from a number of industries, actually—that we're getting a lot of Filipino workers. What is it about the Filipinos that is attractive? Is it that they do tend to have a level of English language? Mr Lade : They do go to school, and English is a compulsory component of that education piece. Also they're very like-minded in that a lot of the trades are very similar. The reality is that the mindset of the Filipinos is that it's a life-changing decision for them to come to Australia and leave their families. It's a cultural thing, certainly from our experience, where those workers want to support the family side of things, but they're trying to build a better life as well. But the work ethic is next to none. From an employer's point of view, their work ethic is unbelievable. They're extremely trustworthy and very hardworking. They'll work a full week plus the Saturday, where we can't get a local tradie to work more than four days a week at the moment. For us, it's just been a good experience, and I guess the infrastructure is set up at the moment for us in particular, where we can do the trade testing. There are companies that have got that infrastructure in place, so the pathway is a lot easier for us to do it. Ms MILLER-FROST: Thank you for that. The Filipino just keeps coming up all over the place and I wondered why. Are there other countries that you might be interested in? I'm thinking of the PALM scheme. We're very much focused on Timor-Leste, the Pacific islands and that sort of thing. Are there other— Mr Prevedello : Can I raise a point and just make it known that there's an important piece of work for plumbing that's being done by BuildSkills. It'll commence shortly and it's looking into mapping various countries on competencies and skills for plumbing education in those countries and how they marry up with our education regime here in Australia. That's going to be an important piece of work in identifying more optimal training regimes around the world and how they marry up with what's required here in Australia so we can get plumbers coming in as migrants through the system quicker. I'm told that that work should be completed at some stage next year. BuildSkills is looking at doing that right now, but, from a plumbing industry point of view, generally speaking, we have the UK, South Africa, New Zealand to an extent and other countries with like training regimes. Obviously we're happy to consider more, but generally that's what the industry likes to look at at the moment. Ms Byrne : You mentioned the Pacific island worker scheme. That's something that we've done a lot of work on and strongly believe it should be expanded to include non-licensed trades. Patrick can provide a little bit more detail on the work we've done to date, but certainly the conversations we've been having with government are quite positive and we're optimistic that we might get some traction, but that would allow, obviously, people from those Pacific island nations to come here and get trained up. Then the other aspect, which I think is important, is that they can take those skills back to their home country, repatriate and improve conditions overseas while also helping us in the short term. Ms MILLER-FROST: You mentioned semi-skills. Are there any particular types of semi-skills that you're looking for? We heard from some witnesses who were looking for high-rise scaffolders and cement slab makers—excuse me, I don't know the language, but they were trades that are not a licensed plumber or a licensed electrician but are still in shortage. Ms Byrne : Are there any specifics, Patrick? Mr Bailey : It comes down to the needs of the local area that we're looking at, so it will be diverse. We're just focusing on non-licensed at the moment, and that's going to be responsive to the region. We're in discussions with government, with Queensland and with the Northern Territory on the program, and with local builders as well, to see what needs they have, and that will help inform what we would be putting forward for those particular non-licensed trades. Ms MILLER-FROST: I'm really interested in BuildSkills. Is that plumbing only? Mr Prevedello : Yes, that specific project is for plumbing. Ms MILLER-FROST: Will that fast track people getting their licences as well? Mr Prevedello : Yes, it could definitely lead to that, but there— CHAIR: On that, you mentioned the UK, New Zealand and South Africa. If they're a plumber from the UK or New Zealand, does that get fast tracked compared to a plumber from the Philippines, for example? Obviously, each country has different skill sets— Mr Prevedello : I'd have to specifics on notice, but they are the most like countries to us when it comes to plumbing training. What's important with plumbing, because it is a licensed trade, is that you've got to maintain that high level of integrity with the trade. It's a little bit different than dealing with the unlicensed trades—a lot different, I guess—because you've got to maintain that level of professionalism. That extra care when assessing migrants has to be taken. Ms MILLER-FROST: I want to circle back to the Filipinos. You were talking about having Tagalog documents. Could you actually work with a team of Filipinos who weren't necessarily English literate but were a team that worked together and had someone over the top who was the translation between the corporate and their little team? Instead of just importing individual workers, could you actually go: 'Here's a team that builds houses. We'll bring the whole team.' Is that something you could do? Mr Lade : That's a great question. It's a hundred per cent what we do. All the guys are managed in teams based exactly on having that. There is an unofficial team leader who is proficient in English and driving as well—not everyone—because we do the driving test, can they drive on the other side of the road? Ms MILLER-FROST: I can't. Mr Lade : The right-hand side of the road. We take that really seriously as well, from a safety perspective. If you don't pass your driving test when we do that in the Philippines, you don't drive in Australia. The teams are really critical, and that's why, for a company like ours, having scale has been beneficial because we can manage those teams. It's a really good question. CHAIR: I had a couple of questions, then we'll come back, if we've got time. During previous public inquiries, we've had different people talking to us about opening up more pathways for migrants to become apprentices—in other words, to have a special visa for people coming over and doing their apprenticeships, just like we have people come over to study medicine or architecture, with a pathway to staying here. Do you have any views on that? Ms Byrne : We're very strongly supportive of an international apprenticeship pathway. One of the main challenges at the moment is that you can come here on a student visa but you can't satisfy the work-on-site hours. We've developed quite a detailed analysis of what would need to change to facilitate that kind of arrangement. We absolutely think that that's a— CHAIR: Would you be able to send that through? Ms Byrne : Absolutely. Mr Bailey : One of the key reasons we're pushing for this is that the standard way for a migrant who would want to come and study a trade in Australia is to do the initial training component. They have no work experience. Then, they have to apply for a bridging visa, and they're in a precarious position where they might not have work within that trade. They're going backwards, so they have to upskill again. They have to do more of that semiskilled labour, not necessarily in their trade. They have to find an employer to support that—not an employer sponsored visa, but a working visa. That's also problematic. They then have to go and skill up again to remain in Australia, and that is a long process. We're looking at five to six years for them to be able to work at their full capacity in Australia as a non-licensed trade. CHAIR: You'd still be filling that pipeline by making sure that we're coming up with an option to actually remain here at the end of the apprenticeship. That would be the— Mr Bailey : Yes, that's right. The conversion of you doing an apprenticeship to getting full employment is very positive. The industry has a very high full employment and full time success. The percentage is in the nineties, which is fantastic. That's a four-year, or three to four years. So, if we had this apprenticeship, you'd be cutting at least two to three years, and that is a massive amount of time. CHAIR: My other question goes back to skilled tradespeople that are coming over, who have certain language skills, written skills et cetera, that are finding it difficult to pass a particular test. In the health industry, many doctors who come over actually work under supervision. If you're an orthopaedic surgeon, you work under the supervision of another orthopaedic surgeon for a period of time to prove competency under close supervision. Could something like that be set up for electricians, plumbers, builders, carpenters et cetera, where they've come over and they actually have the trade skills—the practical skills—but perhaps can't get that final tick because of a few issues? They'd work under a licensed person who could then give them the tick after a period of 12 or 18 months et cetera. At the same time, they're being productive. Mr Lade : Yes, I'd say that's a hundred per cent feasible. CHAIR: We do it for doctors, so why not? Mr Lade : Of course. CHAIR: It's a bit different, but— Mr Lade : We still do it for the trades as well. Our responsibility is to make sure that, once they arrive in Australia, they work up to a proficiency that is at the level that we require. CHAIR: But you could get them productive immediately. Mr Lade : So we get them productive, yes. As I say, we team them up with our local tradespeople. Particularly in some trades like concreting and bricklaying, which are a bit more technical than, say, carpentry and so forth, a hundred per cent they sit underneath our existing trade for a period of time. Sometimes it's three months, sometimes it's six months, sometimes— CHAIR: So that's currently happening now? Mr Lade : It's currently happening, yes. It's probably not in a formalised way. CHAIR: Not as structured as the— Mrs Martin : There are obligations, as an employer of a visa holder, to— CHAIR: Who gives them that final tick? The industry, or the— Mr Lade : It's really on us as the employer to do it. CHAIR: So, if there were a more structured pathway for this— Ms Byrne : I think you could probably do that through the current—or an improved—RPL process. That process is currently, I'd say, the opposite of streamlined. There are certainly a number of points in time at which that kind of assessment needs to occur. So, if there were a review of how that recognition-of-prior-learning system worked, and you could incorporate an in-country, onsite component, that might satisfy some gaps that, potentially, had been identified. I think that that would be something you could fit into that existing system which might produce some better, quicker outcomes. CHAIR: There would be better productivity immediately, on the job, under the supervision. Ms Byrne : Yes. And it would shorten the time between when somebody decides they would like to support a skilled migrant to when that person can get to this country and be productive, as well. Because that time is often quite long, and that builder, as Patrick indicated earlier, may have finished the job by the time they've got approval to bring the skilled migrant over. So anything we can do to condense that timeframe as well would be beneficial. CHAIR: Thank you. Deputy Chair? Mr REBELLO: This is probably a question to Mr Lade first, given the volume of migrant workers that you work with. The real-life example of the consequences of ministerial direction 119, which was the recent one in relation to the offshore-onshore distinction—is that something that's really affected you, and how has that worked? Mr Lade : That's a great question. We have 162 visas in the system at the moment. Eight of those are 14 months, another 64 are over eight months, and the balance—the 90—are now over six months, so that has delayed our whole program. I think the challenge with 119 is that we put these things in place—as a builder, you take on work back here, planning your workforce strategy. So we have put in place a program to have enough workers to keep up with the volume of work that we've got in our pipeline, and that also includes housing. That often comes up in a conversation in terms of the chicken and the egg, around the housing side of it. From our perspective, in our case study, we located an old, derelict health facility. The other thing about skilled workers that's important to note is that they don't need a house each; they need a room each. We've got this derelict health facility in Perth that can house 75 workers, so we've invested $1 million into refurbishing that. It's been derelict for 10 years, so no-one's been using it. We've spent, or we're spending, $1 million to bring that up to speed. It's ready to go; we've spent the money, but we haven't got any workers in it. We're sort of caught. Mr REBELLO: With the numbers that you've outlined, how does that compare to, say, two or three years ago in terms of the waitlist? Mr Lade : We had no-one. Mr REBELLO: From a practical perspective—from the Australian end user perspective—what's the consequence of that on your capacity to deliver new housing? What has it meant, practically? Mr Lade : Time is No. 1, and affordability is No. 2. With all the challenges of cost increases and what's going on in the gulf, the pressure is on builders at the moment to maintain costs. This is, I guess, the broader argument about apprenticeships and why maybe some smaller companies aren't willing—because the cost pressures are enormous. Time is a significant cost to be able to build quickly. Mr REBELLO: Would I be right to say that the consequence of that direction has meant that housing, whether it's affordable or other housing, has not only become more expensive but is also taking longer to build? Mr Lade : Yes, 100 per cent. Mr REBELLO: I think there was some discussion about some of the other solutions we could have. Do you think that looking at tethering skilled migration workforces to specific projects could be a possible solution, especially with very large builds? I'm from the Gold Coast. We're trying to get construction of the heavy rail down to the airport, but there's a lot of construction happening in Queensland because of the Olympics. For those large builds, whether it's in relation to housing or to other projects that require construction workers, would tethering skilled migration workforces to those specific projects be something that we should consider? Ms Byrne : When we're doing the work on the Pacific Island worker scheme, I think that that would work quite well. There's obviously hesitation with bringing individual workers over through that scheme. You want to make sure that there's the certainty of ongoing work. Within that context, we've given that some thought, and there's definite opportunity, particularly with the long timing of some of those infrastructure projects. There's absolutely opportunity to explore something like that. The other point I might make while I've got the floor is you're discussing output and the consequences of delays in processing. We've done some analysis, and we estimate that over a 30-year career a skilled migrant can contribute 21 detached homes. So, if you're delaying those people coming over, you're just delaying their ability to contribute and, overall, reducing housing supply. Mr REBELLO: Sure. CHAIR: Ms Miller-Frost. Ms MILLER-FROST: I'm going to be a little cheeky. Ms Byrne, you mentioned a document with 32 recommendations. Ms Byrne : Yes. Ms MILLER-FROST: If we haven't got that, can you send that through? Ms Byrne : Yes. Ms MILLER-FROST: That would be great. We've heard some really interesting numbers here about the shortage of workers that you're predicting in your industries. Please be very public about that. You know what the migration conversation is in the community, and we need people to understand that we actually do need skilled migration, because they are largely not differentiating in the sorts of conversations I'm having. Mr Lade : I agree. It's an education piece, I agree. Ms MILLER-FROST: Absolutely. My question, however, is: given we know that people who complete an apprenticeship—I'm sorry, it's slightly off migration, but anyway—have fantastic employment outcomes, why are we actually losing people halfway through? Are they being snapped up by jobs that are semiskilled, and they're just jumping for the money now? Why are people not completing? Ms Byrne : That's definitely one of the reasons. You can earn more two years into your apprenticeship than you can as a second-year apprentice, so that's absolutely a factor. Other factors are that it isn't what they expect. We talked about VET in schools earlier on to make sure that people are exposed to what it is to work on a construction site so that they don't get 12 to 18 months in and decide, 'Actually, laying bricks is not something that I really want to do for the rest of my life.' They're absolutely key issues. I think the cost of living is a factor as well, which goes to your first point. Patrick, are there any other key issues that I've missed? Mr Bailey : As Jocelyn mentioned, there are areas within the industry that need work and need addressing. There are cultural aspects. The industry is a very old industry. All industries are responding to the new form of emergent workforce, which is the younger generations. They have a different mentality to those previous in some quite significant areas. That's a challenge that has to be responded to. Different groups, different individual organisations and businesses, are responding differently. But as an industry we need to actually look at what the emergent workforce is, where they're coming from and what they're looking for and be a bit more responsive to that. Ms Byrne : You can't work from home when you're a construction worker! The attitudes are a little different now than perhaps they were 10 years ago. It's up to industry, as Patrick's indicating, to respond. But there are just some things we can't offer. Mrs Martin : We run those programs in schools to prepare students as well. Funnily enough, some of them are being lured out of their apprenticeship with higher wages just to labour as opposed to being educated and finishing their apprenticeships. In some cases, the industry itself provides more attractive options for them other than finishing their apprenticeships. We employ almost a thousand apprentices ourselves through our GTO, so we've got good data on why people are leaving. Sometimes they're actually moving to a different apprenticeship. There's a cohort of people that's worth noting. They're not actually not finishing an apprenticeship; they're actually just changing to a different trade. That's hard to pick up, because they're actually re-registered. They drop out and re-register. Sometimes the data's not completely showing those apprentices that may be moving to a plumbing or electrical apprenticeship once they realise that there are opportunities onsite as well. The upside too is that we have a lot of interest from mature-age apprentices—people who have had a university qualification and now want to go into a trade. That little bit more that an employer has to pay for a mature-age apprenticeship outweighs the benefit that you might get from somebody else. Mature-age people or people who may have come to Australia and are now looking for a career in construction can't actually easily move into a career in construction and get that apprenticeship start because of that slight differential. A mature age-apprenticeship is over 21, so it's not like these are old people. That ability to move back into an apprenticeship later in your 20s is not as easy to do. I think that's a big opportunity for us. Ms MILLER-FROST: Thank you. CHAIR: That brings us to the end of our time, but before I close I believe Mr Rebello has a couple of questions that he'll put to you. You can respond to us in writing if you can because of the timeframe. Mr REBELLO: I just have two questions. The first is in relation to Mrs Martin's comment about how net overseas migration can actually be higher if we're actually including the right people. Despite the high levels of migration, construction trades remain a very small share of skilled visa holders. Is it the case that it's the management of the program that's failing to address the needs of this sector already? The second question is in relation to that link between housing and migration. Is it the case that migration is currently adding to housing demand faster than the skilled programs adding to the trades that are needed to build houses? Those are my two questions. CHAIR: We'll make sure you get that in writing. Don't worry about scribbling it down. We'll ensure that it comes to you in writing. Thank you very much for appearing before us today. It's quite obvious from what we're hearing not just from your submissions and briefing today but from all groups is that there is a huge shortage. We heard about the Olympic build in Queensland. We have AUKUS in South Australia. There's the mining industry. There's infrastructure. We're getting the message clearly and quite loudly. There is a debate going on at the moment about migration in Australia. Unfortunately, when these debates become political, we're giving social licences to people to dominate the debate. This is where we require industries who are at the coalface of all of this, who have the facts—like yourselves—to perhaps speak and let people know how important these roles are for us as a nation, for our economy and for the future of Australia, because if we get this wrong our whole nation could go backwards. You are at that coalface, so it'd be very pleasing to hear industry speak about your endeavours, the trials and tribulations that you face with filling jobs and how important it is to have people from overseas working in this industry. If we get that debate wrong—and the debate usually will happen up here, but we're politicians, so no-one listens to us. If comes from you guys, it has credibility; it has real credibility. That's why we called you in. On that note, thank you for coming today. If you've been asked to provide any additional information, please send it through to the secretariat by 23 October. There are a couple of questions that the deputy chair has asked, and we'll get them to you in writing. You'll be sent a transcript of today's evidence, and you'll also have an opportunity to request any corrections, if you feel there have been errors made in that transcript. Once again, thank you very much. A lot of this information will come up in some of our recommendations. Proceedings suspended from 10:21 to 10:32 .