Ms O’CONNOR – Thank you, and the related area is how we adapt to AI and robots taking people’s jobs. Robots now working in primary production, manufacturing. Robots can write stories but really badly.
Mr ELLIS – Better than some though.
Ms O’CONNOR – But there’s a whole area here of risks as well, isn’t there? Because we don’t want to be training people up for jobs that may become redundant in a decade. We don’t want to do that to our kids or to our people. What kind of understanding and planning is there for making sure that we’re channelling people into the jobs for the future that can’t be taken by robots?
Mr ELLIS – It is an interesting one. Like often, you can talk about robots taking people’s jobs but often technology augments people’s capacity and capability.
Ms O’CONNOR – I think it’s a ‘yes, and’.
Mr ELLIS – It’s a really interesting space because, for example, there are a whole range of nurses out there that are able to do more hands-on work because some of the paperwork is now being able to be delivered through some AI augmented capability. You know that sort of thing where we help make people a bit more efficient so that they can focus on the things that humans really need to be doing. If you look at our unemployment rate at the moment, we’ve had massive increases in terms of our population and our technology since, you know, 1800. There’re more people employed now as technology has continued to roll through our economy.
It’s a threat and an opportunity but certainly some of the big areas that we’ve been looking at is how can we ensure that vocational education and training is delivering digital technology skills. We mentioned before the partnership with the Commonwealth. That’s a key area and TasTAFE has actually, with us, delivered a new cyber-security centre because that’s certainly an emerging area of need that we all need some capability in. I’ll pass to the team from state growth if there’s anything further to –
Ms O’CONNOR – And if there’s any specific body of planning work that’s being done here.
Ms PATERSON – Yes. Through you, minister. Probably one of the things that’s really significant in this space is the national skills minister’s commitment to qualifications reform. As we all know at the moment training packages can be a little bit slow to be updated and we really need training to be relevant not just for now but also increasingly into the future, to bring those technologies on board. I think that that national work around qualifications reform to ensure that those qualifications can be more agile will be really critical to ensuring that learners have a good experience going forward.
Mr ELLIS – And bringing some of that technology into our training equipment, even. So say for example yesterday I was at the Alanvale campus where they train a lot of boilermaker welders, and we just invested with TAFE in –
CHAIR – I think it’s called metal fabrication now.
Mr ELLIS – Depends what they’re doing, but – maybe I’m showing my age. I don’t know, Chair.
Ms O’CONNOR – Hang on, I’ll check. You keep going.
Mr ELLIS – Some of the investments that we’re making there, not just in new welding sets but new welding simulators so that our young people are actually able to learn using welding simulated technology. They can take risks. They can get immediate feedback. They can do peer comparisons, and they don’t have to waste a lot of, say for example metal, gas and all that sort of stuff to –
Ms O’CONNOR – Can I just interrupt you for a second there. Sorry, minister, I think you veered of a little bit. It doesn’t really sound to me like there’s quite enough understanding of how rapidly AI is displacing people from their jobs. Ill just park that with you as a member of the ministerial council. But I have a particular constituent question to ask you.
I’m aware of a highly qualified theatre nurse at the Royal Hobart Hospital who is here on a 482 skills visa which expires at the end of next year. She can’t have that visa renewed because she’s over the age of 45. It’s devastating to her because she wants to stay here. She’s extremely qualified and exactly the sort of person, wouldn’t you agree (audio malfunction).
Mr ELLIS – I’ll just bring Renee Woodhouse to the table, if you like. She just needs a couple of minutes and then she’ll come back with the answer. If we can we just give her a couple of minutes.
Ms O’CONNOR – Yes. I’m very happy to do that and then that leads to my last question on this line of questioning, minister, which I often ask for, and that is the information on how many skilled visas have gone through state growth? The numbers by country of origin. Thank you.
Ms CAIRNEY – Through you, minister. WE have that and can table that once I find it in my folder.
Ms O’CONNOR – Great. Can I ask, is there any kind of flexibility here or can State Growth intervene? Because we have tried to help this person and it’s very difficult.
Mr ELLIS – So this is skill visas and country of origin.
Ms O’CONNOR – Thank you very much. What can State Growth to make sure that we’re not losing someone of that capacity who we clearly need here just because they happen to be over 45?
Mr ELLIS – Yes, just give us a couple of minutes and we’ll bring Rene to the table, but, yes, we’ll come back.
Ms O’CONNOR – I’m happy to go other questions and then Rene can come back when she’s ready.
