Skills shortage the correction we had to have

The Independent Weekly 16-22/10/2005 p.6.
This crass article by Ian Williams,with quotes by Professor Sue Richardson,Director of the National Institute of Labour studies at Flinders University,shows just how out of touch our academics are with the realities of the looming globalised world.

The Trade Treaty with China,Howard’s parting gift to Australian business,will blow any hope the Australian Unions had of massive wage hikes,right out of the water.

Details of this secret treaty are still not known but enough information has been leaked to show the direction Howard is going.

Expensive Australian tradesmen will not be needed.  China wants to prospect for and mine uranium in Australia and Howard agrees.

Bracks is short of tradesmen in Victoria and will send teachers to China to train Chinese tradesmen to the standard required in Australia.  Chinese welders are already in Victoria.

Outsourcing of IT jobs in South Australia has resulted in many IT operatives in this state being without work.  Rann wants to recruit IT workers in India because South Australian workers are not sufficiently skilled.  Perhaps Professor Richardson could explain why our universities,including Flinders,cannot train our IT graduates to a reasonable standard.

Professor Richardson claims that employers must shoulder the blame for skill shortages and that parents want their children to go to the university.  She is wrong.  It was a Labor government,probably Keatings,who said that Australia should be the clever country and Left wing education departments,which shut the technical high schools,saying all students should stay at school till year 12 and then decide,if they want,to go to the university.  Left wing educators like Professor Richardson have the misconception that all people have equal talent,that is the problem.

University students pay for their education so why should not tradesmen pay for theirs?  Howard has the answer.

“Embedded Visas” in Howard’s treaty with China will enable Australian trained Chinese tradesmen to work in Australia for reasonable periods of time and these tradesmen will be employed by Chinese firms operating in Australia.  They will be paid Chinese rates and only receive a small proportion of their wages in Australia,the rest in China.

If Professor Richardson knew anything about globalization,she must know that the West is transferring it’s wealth to the third world.  Our standard of living must fall and so must our wages and of course so should hers.