Agribusiness industries gain a new voice on training
2 July 2004
The people and businesses who feed Australia, from farm to table, have a new voice on their training needs.
A new body --- the Agri-Food Skills Council – has been formed to boost training in food production and processing sectors and keep the training system in touch with the industries’ skill needs.
The new council will represent the interests of almost 140,000 businesses, with more than half-a-million employees, in farming and grazing, including the meat and seafood industries and manufacture, food and beverage processing. It will also include racing, and bloodstock exports.
It is part of a growing network of skills councils being formed as part of an Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) drive to boost forward planning for the nation’s skill needs.
Newly-elected skills council chair John Baker says the council’s first priority is to identify common skills needs and identify more efficient ways of tackling them across the agri-food industries.
Mr Baker heads a 14-member Board, which will receive industry-specific advice from five standing committees.
"The council will be a hotline from our industries to governments to ensure that our employers, employees, apprentices, trainees, and students have access to the training products and services we need, when we need them," he said.
“Our priority will be to identify our common skill needs and areas where we can increase efficiency in skilling our people, to ensure the international competitiveness of one of Australia’s most economically and socially valuable industry groups.
ANTA Board chair David Hind says the council will be an important lever in the effort to boost Australia’s rural export industries.
“Our rural industries are vital to regional Australia, as well as being major export-earners. Our meat industry alone supplies five per cent of the global market,” he says.
“With international trade barriers falling, increased productivity through training is critical to agribusinesses’ survival and growth.”
The council will:
- assist industries, enterprises, and their workforce to integrate skill development with business goals; and
- support high quality, nationally recognised training products and services.
Six other councils are in place: the Innovation and Business, Community Services and Health, ElectroComms and Energy Utilities, Service Industries, and the Resources and Infrastructure Industry Skills Councils, and TDT Australia, which covers transport and distribution.
For more information visit http://www.anta.gov.au/vetAdvisory.asp
Media inquiries: Lisa White (07) 3246 2368