Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday laid out his plans to reshape the nation’s post-coronavirus economy, saying improved job skills training would be essential for a changing labor market.
In a keynote speech to the National Press Club in Canberra, Morrison called for an overhaul of vocational education so it is more responsive to business needs.
He also announced a new working group to discuss industrial relations reform over the next four months.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The prime minister signaled that huge fiscal support to help the economy through the COVID-19 crisis cannot continue indefinitely, but that the government would focus on resetting the economy for the next three to five years of growth.
Tax reform deregulation and cheaper energy prices are all part of Morrison’s agenda, but his speech focused on skills reform and workplace relations.
“We need Australians better trained for the jobs businesses are looking to create,” Morrison said. “We will all have to retrain to live and work in a way that creates a sustainable” economy and society amid the virus impact.
His government’s so-called JobMaker program, announced yesterday, is to focus on linking education funding toward skills needed by businesses, simplifying higher-education systems to create more consistency between state jurisdictions, boosting funding transparency and better coordinating funding and subsidies.
As part of Morrison’s industrial relations reform agenda, Australian Attorney-General Christian Porter is to lead a group of employers, industry groups, employee representatives and governments to look at award simplification, enterprising agreement-making, addressing benefits for casual and fixed-term employees and enforcement of the rules.
“The purpose is simple and honest: to explore and hopefully find a pathway to sensible, long-lasting reform, with just one goal — make jobs,” Morrison said.
As an olive branch to the union movement, which he thanked in the speech for helping the government enact rapid stimulus policies during the coronavirus lockdown, Morrison said he was shelving the Ensuring Integrity Bill, which has yet to pass the Australian Senate and was designed to crackdown on union corruption.
Morrison encouraged employer groups and unions to “put their weapons down” to help revive the economy, and insisted that his coalition’s policy has “never has been” to weaken trade unions.
The divide between employers and workers within Australia has grown in recent years amid stagnant wage growth, but with unemployment set to top 10 percent this year, Morrison said the time was right for a conciliatory approach.
“We need people to get together and sort this stuff out. As I say, they’ve been caught in grooves for too long, and grooves going in parallel lines and not coming together. And that’s why I’m hoping this process will achieve,” he said.
Morrison is looking to reanimate large sections of the economy by July, when he plans for the states and territories to finish implementing a three-stage removal of most lockdown restrictions.
He was keen to stress that the government’s stimulus measures, which include a boost to welfare payments amounting to A$150 billion over six months after the JobKeeper revision, needs to expire later this year.
While much of Morrison’s reset agenda remains vague beyond skills training and changes to industrial relations laws, he is ruling out building trade barriers.
“We will not retreat into the downward spiral of protectionism,” he said. “To the contrary, we will continue to be part of global supply chains that can deliver the prosperity we rely on to create jobs, support incomes and build our businesses.”
Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus, cautiously welcomed Morrison’s initiatives, telling reporters in Sydney that she was “glad to see the 20-year ritual of union-bashing stop.”
However, she said job creation would take more than industrial reforms, arguing the government must reconsider cutting off wage subsidies in September and reinvest in skills education.
The Australian Industry Group welcomed the priority on workplace relations and skills training.
“A more flexible and productive workplace relations system can be achieved, without compromising fairness,” chief executive Innes Willox said.
Additional reporting by Reuters and the Guardian
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