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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.
As we head into the Easter and ANZAC long weekends, the team at HIA wishes you a safe, relaxing, and well-deserved break with your loved ones.
“The Housing Industry Association (HIA) welcomes today’s announcement by the Coalition to commit $260 million to build a new national network of Australian Technical Colleges to target boosting our industry’s critical trade shortages,” said HIA Managing Director, Jocelyn Martin.
“A key reason why the cost of government fees, charges and taxes has increased by $160,000 over the past five years, is the increased time it takes to gain approval to turn farmland into a residential suburb,” stated HIA’s Chief Economist, Tim Reardon.
“There were 168,050 new homes that commenced construction in 2024, which remains at its lowest levels in over a decade,” stated HIA Chief Economist Tim Reardon.