PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) has welcomed the outcome of the federal government’s Jobs and Skills summit, held this week.

The federal government at the end of the summit agreed to 36 immediate initiatives, including modernising Australia’s workplace relation laws, amending the Fair Work Act, improving access to jobs for women and First Nations people, increasing the permanent migration programme ceiling to 195 000 in 2022/23 to ease critical workforce shortages, and extending visas and relaxing work restrictions for international students.

MCA CEO Tania Constable on Friday welcomed the initiatives around childcare support, training and skilled migration, saying the industry would continue to engage constructively on proposals to increase real wages through productivity growth.

“The Australian government’s commitment to increase permanent skilled migration by 195 000 nationally will benefit regional communities, with an extra 9 000 places providing the mining industry an increased talent pool.

“Bringing forward child support and more fee-free TAFE places are important measures to increase choice and pathways for Australians, including women, people with disability, First Nations people and families,” said Constable.

“The strong contribution of mining, and the opportunities for further minerals development and value-adding, must not be compromised by a return to industrial disruption and wage-price inflation, which characterised industry-wide bargaining prior to the Keating government’s workplace relations reforms.

“A number of new workplace relations priorities nominated by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Tony Burke will require careful consideration and extensive consultation to avoid unintended and counterproductive outcomes for jobs, productivity, wages and investment in the technology and equipment that will position workers to thrive in the industries of the future,” Constable said.

She noted that no case had been made to extend multi-employer bargaining to high-paying industries such as mining.

“As the Minister indicated, any change must preserve the ability of employers to make enterprise agreements under the current regime.

“Mining has successfully used enterprise bargaining and a suite of employment options to treble employment over the past 20 years from 88 000 to 278 000 people, with 88% of those jobs being permanent and average wages across the industry of A$144 000 a year.”