chief minister's skills and workforce roundtable 2010

A high level skills roundtable drawing together the city's top business, education and training thinkers including ACPET was chaired by Chief Minister Jon Stanhope last week to tackle one of the biggest priorities on the ACT Government's agenda for 2010.

The roundtable built on the work and ideas of the high-level ACT Skills Commission, which reported to the Government in 2008. The February 3 meeting addressed new challenges arising from the global financial crisis as well as emerging trends which illustrate that there are a number of challenges confronting Canberra that have developed or heightened since the Commission reported in April 2008.

Access Economics has tipped that the ACT's skills needs will double over the next three years with Chief Minister Stanhope stating that "Solutions will depend on our capacity to harness our people, improve our productivity, and optimise our workforce participation - the three ‘Ps' underpinning the matching skilled workers to demand.

"Among the big challenges will be to encourage workers to remain actively engaged in the workforce beyond the traditional retirement age.

"Another challenge is to attract quality workers to our town - an area in which we are already achieving considerable success through our Skilled and Business Migration Program, in conjunction with the Live in Canberra campaign.

"These efforts have helped boost our population by 1.6% in the year ended 30 June 2009 and have seen 167 skilled migrants with occupations in demand make new homes in our city in the same year, with an estimated $7.5 million benefit to the local economy.

In concluding the meeting, Chief Minister Stanhope undertook to prepare and circulate a discussion paper building on advice received from delegates around the table for the purpose of informing further work around this issue.