Artificial intelligence uptake and staff and property shortages among the big issues for WA bosses

Sam Walsh’s experience at Michigan car manufacturer General Motors in the 1970s might spark some ideas for businesses battling WA’s hot labour market. The University of Melbourne commerce graduate — who would decades later run Rio Tinto — secured a scholarship to attend a post-grad program run by the company in conjunction with what is now Kettering University. “It was actually wonderful,” Mr Walsh said. “They put me through each of their divisions, I worked in finance, supply, vehicle assembly, data processing.” The concept of a degree-apprenticeship, more common overseas than Australia, is just one way the State could shake up its education and training regime to be more relevant in an era of skills shortages, local business leaders say. Despite the population boom, unemployment is 3.4 per cent and employers will be fighting to attract talent as WA readies for increasing demands from AUKUS and the green energy transition. Housing Industry Association WA chief Michael McGowan said there was a war over talent looming in WA with competition from defence, the Brisbane Olympics, and non-residential building. “There is a huge demand for a talent base that is largely exhausted,” Mr McGowan said. The qualifications required to move between industries have become a handbrake. WA needed to look “critically” at the apprenticeships to make them less daunting for school leavers and easier for mature workers changing careers, Mr McGowan said. “(Telling) a 25 to 40 year old to go back on the minimum wage for four years, it’s not attractive,” he told a CEO Voice lunch co-hosted by the Australian Institute of Management WA and The West Australian. “If it’s a year to get a certain skill set, (they) can probably manage that.” Mr McGowan said a four-year apprenticeship for a 15-year-old should be shorter and more flexible. “A trade apprenticeship is something that’s done over the course of four years. There’s two weeks of TAFE every quarter,” he said. “Looking at the type of training that we’re doing, we’re putting bricklayers through a course. that could be two (years). “We don’t do brick fireplaces any more but we make (students learn) that as part of the training program.” Programmed head of finance Helen Delmenico also highlighted the shills shortage as a key issue for the company, an outsourced supplier of staff and maintenance services. “Look at the apprenticeship commencement data, the completion rate is sitting . . . about 55 per cent completion, which is extremely low,” she said. “We’ve got a real opportunity to reshape the way that we’re engaging with the younger generation. “School-based traineeships are one thing that we’re (trying) at the moment, which is getting some really good traction.” Also keen to promote trades was Onecard Group founder Kareena Waters, who said she wanted to see “the pride” go back into those sorts of jobs. “We need to put the importance back into the trades that was around in the 1950s and ’60s, where somebody was indentured in a trade,” she said. “That was a pride. We lost that pride in trades.” Nothing automatic WA’s dominant resources sector — which has in recent years generated about 40 per cent of the State’s income — is often blamed for enticing workers from other industries. But Mr Walsh, now a director of Japanese conglomerate Mitsui, warned that was not the full picture. “A lot of people blame mining for skills shortages,” he said. “When I was CEO of Rio Tinto Iron, I automated a whole range of things. Automated haul trucks, drills, heavy haul rail, set up the mobile operations centre at Perth Airport. “I did that solely because young people didn’t want to go and work in the Pilbara. We had a huge turnover of about a third of the workplace, people who’d come up there maybe two years or three years then want to come back to town.” That roll-out of automation was perhaps a taste of what may loom in the decade ahead with the rise of artificial intelligence. Hundreds of job losses have smashed the Aussie tech sector this year as companies shift their strategies, including at Block, Atlassian and WiseTech. The disruption is a big issue on the mind of Wilson Casado, co-founder of consulting firm Visagio. “If you look at those media and retail businesses 20 years ago, and what they are today, it’s completely different,” he said. “I think this it is the same fashion. “AI is both threat and opportunity. What is clear . . . if you don’t follow that, you stay on the bad side of it.” He cited the example of American legal startup Harvey which recently was reported to hit a valuation of more than $15b. Home team With the median Perth property price surging towards $1 million — up 22 per cent in the past year according to Cotality — housing affordability was a top issue for executives. It will also be high on the agenda for the State Government with more than one-third of voters listing housing as their top concern in a recent DemosAU poll. Real Estate Institute of WA chief executive Blaine Slater rang the alarm about the State’s rental vacancy rate of 2.6 per cent. “It’s even more acute in areas where they may be more appealing to the workforce that we want to bring into WA to enable all of the projects,” he said. “Around the CBD . . . the rental market is in that low zero point something.” City of Perth chief Michelle Reynolds ranked affordable accommodation the number one issue for the local government. “We need to ensure that the people that work and keep the machinery of the city running actually can afford to live close to where they they work,” she said. The city wants 90,000 residents by 2050 — roughly tripling over three decades. “Our targets are now less stretch and more reality,” she said, pointing to the new Edith Cowan University campus and student housing. “I can see the city changing to accommodate (the student) demographic. There are many more restaurants open past five o’clock.”