Maritime Workforce Position Paper

Multiple industry forums, Maritime Skills Reports, reports commissioned by Australian unions, industry associations focus groups, Australian Parliament inquiries, and the Australian Government Strategic Fleet Taskforce terms of reference all indicate the maritime sector has skill shortages, and the problem is becoming more severe. This issue has a direct impact on the capacity of the maritime workforce to rapidly scale to meet the expansion and maintenance of Australia’s offshore oil and gas sector. As Australia’s energy strategy shifts to renewables, there will also be a severe shortage of maritime professionals to support offshore windfarms and to carry out important decommissioning work.

This problem is of national significance and market forces alone are incapable of solving it. The urgent need to coordinate across the industry, deploy government resources and create robust structures to remedy deficiencies in the development of the maritime workforce was first addressed more than ten years ago in the 2013 Australian Maritime Workforce Development Strategy7. Given the responsible Minister at the time is now the current Prime Minister8, it is hoped that sufficient attention can finally be given to the recommendations.

There is an opportunity for federal and state governments to work with industry, leveraging existing initiatives to grow the workforce of the future and remedy the current deficiencies. The research contained in this paper has identified four immediate actions to resolve current issueswith the maritime workforce and two recommendations for implementation over the next 3-5 years to ensure issues in the maritime workforce do not undermine national resilience. They are as follows