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“HIA recently undertook a skills mapping assessment and found that Australia is staring down the barrel of a shortfall in excess of 83,000 trade workers to build the Government’s 1.2 million new homes target.
“This equates to over 22,000 more chippies, 17,000 more sparkies, 12,000 more plumbers, 5,000 more brickies and 3,000 more concreters, to get these much-needed homes out of the ground and to lock up.
“Put simply, if we don’t have the tradies coming through the 1.2 million homes target will be a pipe dream.
“Creating career opportunities and promoting trades as a first choice career is key to growing our local workforce and boosting apprentice numbers.
“For too long, our schooling system has preferenced university over trades and has resulted in too many young people seeing going into trade as being a second choice option.
“This investment of $260 million to deliver 12 new specialist trade skills schools for years 10-12 or 11-12 is an important step in changing that stigma and supporting more high school students to enter into a trade.
“It is also pleasing to see that these new centres will look to regional areas where skill shortages are even more pronounced. The pressures in these regions and access to appropriate training are currently a significant barrier to a young person undertaking a trade.
“These technical colleges can provide a new pathway of choice for ambitious young Australians, fast tracking them into high-skilled and well-paying jobs. HIA is calling on all major parties to match this commitment to address our industry’s current and growing chronic skills shortages,” concluded Ms Martin.
October is National Safe Work Month, which is an important time for both employers and workers to focus on, and commit to, promoting safe and healthy workplaces, according to the Housing Industry Association (HIA) Chief Executive – Industry & Policy Simon Croft.
The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show that while new home building approvals in the ACT have lifted slightly in 2025, the pace of growth remains far too slow to meet the territory’s housing needs.
HIA have been lobbying for changes to streamline the process which will allow certifiers to issue Certificates of Occupancy (CoO).
“The positive impact of a decline in the cash rate hasn’t been sufficient to drive a genuine recovery in home building,” stated HIA Senior Economist Tom Devitt.