Speech to open Sheet Metal Industry Awards
  June 1 st , 2007
Radisson Hotel, Sydney

Well thanks very much Colin.

Can I also acknowledge Walter Suber, and the distinguished judges here this morning. You have big responsibilities ahead of you. To Brian Wexham, Chief Executive of the Institute for Trade Skills Excellence.

Most importantly to our eight finalists, it's wonderful to see you here, and your parents and families.

Ladies and gentleman.

Well thank you for this opportunity to be a small part of what is a very important occasion I think, and I do like to acknowledge the initiative of the sheet metal industry association. This is a really good thing you are doing, and I do congratulate you on taking this initiative.

I think it is very important to recognise excellence in our community. Very important to celebrate it. There is a lot of pressure on people to conform and be no different to anyone else, but the fact of the matter is we are all born with different talents. And there is a group of young people here today who've got very special talents, and I think it is very important that those with special talents, talents they've been blessed with that they should be praised and acknowledged if they make the most of these talents. And you can see from the quality of the work here, in fact someone said to me that Australia Square should be paying for the privilege of exhibiting these works because it is drawing a crowd, a big crowd. But you can see from the quality of this work here today that the young people who have done this work not only have huge talent but they clearly have great commitment.

Through life and my experiences in being in all sorts of situations, no one has achieved a lot, despite their talents, unless they are committed and have put the hard yards in. You've got to develop and hone those talents.

To be chosen to be a finalist, at this level means that all of these young people are blessed with very special talents, but they have also worked very hard to develop those talents and I think it's a great thing you've done and I sincerely congratulate you on becoming finalists here this morning.

I think we made a big mistake as a community 20 or 30 years ago when for some reason we closed down training schools. It really has been a really unfortunate feature of much of the last 20 or 30 years when we closed all the technical high schools the country. They did provide a stream for those people who were born with strong technical or vocational or creative talents. We got to the point almost where parents feel that they have failed if their children don't go off to university. I think that it is really really unfortunate that as a country we are paying dearly now, the whole skills crisis, we are paying dearly because of the very misplaced attitude. What you are doing here today is part of, I think, a big movement around the country to turn this around.

Because the fact is we are all born with a different range of talents, some have got strong academic talents, and they should be developed . But most of us in fact have strong technical or vocational or creative talents, and that's a fact, and in the sort of modern society we've got now were you can see the sophistication of a trade like sheet metal, I'm seeing it as the Minister for Vocational and Further Education, I go all around the country and you name a trade and I can show you enormous sophistication, skill, talent, and all the rest. And in fact, the whole prosperity of our community is based on making the most of those talents.

It is anticipated as we go forward to meet all of the challenges we've got from China and India emerging, and very aggressive competition in the communities that surround us, the region that surrounds us, there's a lot of opportunities there but there is also threats if we're not fast on our feet, and getting better and better and better and what we are doing.

They anticipate that in the workforce in the future we will need about 20 per cent of the workforce with a university qualification of some sort – lawyers, doctors and so on, and that matches up to what we have now. It's in balance. It is anticipated that we will need 60 per cent of the workforce with a high quality technical or vocational education, and what we've got now is 30 per cent. That's a huge gap.

So for these young finalists here today, you are embarking on career that's not only going to be very important to you, but very important to the community, and it is really rich with opportunity. There is this huge gap that we need to fill of people who really do excel with the sorts of talents that you've got. We've got to get to a point in the community very quickly where a high quality technical or vocational education is as prized as a university degree. That's got to be a very urgent objective. It is so critical that we have to raise the status of the trades. If you go to Germany a master artisan, someone who is a master tradesman, who excels in their field they have the status of a judge. They are as valued as a judge. That is the status of a master artisan in Germany .

There are a lot of leaders here this morning, our judges, people from the sheet metal industry and others, senior people throughout the community and they have got to be repeating this message, taking this message out to the community. We need to change attitude as much as anything else. A lot of this will come through shining a light on the significance and the wonderful nature of the talents that our young people have got.

So to all the finalists, you should be very proud of your achievements to date. And I think you should as you go on ,you'll strike barriers and you'll make mistakes, you should always think back to today and to this achievement and draw strength from it. We draw strength from these things, and that is the importance of today, and celebrating your achievements. Draw strength from it, be proud of what you've done and savour the moment.

the Hon Andrew Robb AO MP
Minister for Vocational and Further Education