Submission
The Alliance has considered the guiding questions for Jobs and Skills Australia’s consultation on the Roadmap and provides the following insights that are relevant to regional, rural and remote Australia:
- We recommend inclusion of rural areas as a distinct geographic area in the Roadmap. This is considering the population characteristics, local attributes and health issues and needs that are specific for rural areas, distinct from regional and remote areas.
- The Roadmap presents a strong vision for jobs and skills in Australia. It could benefit from additional information on the roles and responsibilities of the key players in the jobs market, such as the Jobs and Skills Councils, industry bodies, unions, and employers, as well as Commonwealth, state and territory governments, at the implementation phase.
- The metrics presented in the Roadmap are useful. These could be more granular for rural and remote areas, with more comprehensive data broken down by geographic location (by Modified Monash Model) in relation to health workforce and skills needs.
- Vision Principle 2 – Developing skills – The Alliance agrees that providing access to higher education in the regions is critical to supporting the development of skilled labour into the future. “Growing our own” for rural Australia, as we know from research, has demonstrated that rural students are much more likely to stay or go back to rural areas, as are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practitioners who wish to be close to family and Country.
- Vision Principle 3 – Quality Jobs – The Alliance supports the intent behind this vision principle – that workers are in employment that optimally leverages their knowledge, skills and experience in accordance with the needs of the community.
- Vision Principle 5 – Meeting demand – The Alliance welcomes inclusion of nurses, doctors, pharmacists, and emergency services, such as ambulance and paramedics, as essential services in the Roadmap.
Of the 5 Vision Principles, meeting demand is perhaps the most challenging in the context of the health sector. Due to the health workforce shortages in rural Australia, employers in the healthcare, aged care, and disability sectors are often competing for the same workforce. - Supporting local place-based strategies and equitable funding – The Alliance welcomes the Roadmap’s acknowledgement of localised place-based approaches that are designed to ensure local labour markets work well within communities.
The full submission can be downloaded below.