IR legislation at odds with jobs ambition

The Albanese Government’s ambition to increase the jobs and skills Australia needs to mine and develop the critical minerals required to achieve Net Zero will be dealt a significant blow by its heavy-handed industrial relations changes.

According to the government’s Jobs and Skills Report, released today, Australian mining will be a key driver of skills development in the coming decade, with the sector tipped to grow by 18 per cent.

That growth rate is second only to the services sector.

But the government is undermining its own growth projections by proposing draconian and damaging workplace relations legislation that threatens to undo any gains achieved on employment.

To talk about creating the jobs of tomorrow’s critical minerals and clean energy future remains an exercise in futility when you have an industrial relations policy that threatens jobs and opportunity, and will chase investment overseas.

In its submission to the Clean Energy Capacity Study, the MCA stated that Australia was ‘starting from behind’ in generating the workforce needed for the mining and production of materials required to reach its Net Zero ambition.

The MCA supports initiatives announced in both key employment reports aimed at bridging the skills gap. However Australia is at risk of starting from even further behind in that critical journey, due to the government’s retrograde industrial relations policies.

It is increasingly apparent that the Government’s agenda on employment is deeply conflicted, if not contradictory. It gives with one hand, and takes away with the other. It empowers job creation with a range of policy initiatives, but imperils job creation with its needless IR agenda.