Peak body, Australia’s largest builder urge faster tradie pathways

Encouraging new people into building trades looks to have hit a stumbling block, as new data from the National Centre for Vocational Education reveals apprentice numbers dropped by nearly 9 per cent over the 12 months to March 2024.

This data also coincides with new house builds declining by more than 10 per cent in the past financial year, causing the experts at Master Builders Australia some concern.

The peak body has repeatedly warned that low apprenticeship numbers will worsen the nation’s housing crisis if action is not taken immediately.

The warning comes after new Australian Bureau of Statistics data revealed 2023-24 was the worst year for home building in more than a decade, dropping 8.8 per cent to 158,690 new starts.

Master Builders chief economist Shane Garrett said that detached house starts fell by 10.1 per cent, while higher density commencements were down by 6.0 per cent.

“If building continues at this pace, we’ll be in for less than 800,000 new home starts over the next five years.

“This would mean a shortfall of over 400,000 homes compared with the National Housing Accord target.”

The data release, revealing a drop to numbers not seen since 2011-12, coincided with fresh data from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research which showed declines in apprenticeship numbers.

Apprenticeship completions fell 8.6 per cent from 24,545 in the year to March 2023 to 22,420 to March 2024.

The researched also revealed that in the same period, apprenticeship commencements dropped 11.8 per cent from 47,110 to 41,520, and the number of apprentices in training declined 2.2 per cent from 124,280 to 121,530.

Australia’s largest residential builder, Metricon, also has concerns about the slow intake of tradies into the industry.

Metricon General Manager Regional Housing Victoria, Phil Barrett, said the housing crisis is hitting regional Victoria hard, and skilled labour shortages are a critical roadblock.

“At Metricon, we’re taking decisive action to address this, ensuring that regional communities can build and thrive.

“As part of our commitment to supporting the government’s housing goals, we’re partnering with key industry bodies to ramp up trade apprenticeships across regional Victoria.

“This is a vital step to securing the skilled workforce we need to meet demand and keep the building sector strong in our regional areas.”

One such move to support future talent, Metricon has joined forces with the Building & Construction Foundation for the Mario Biasin Scholarships.

With a $15,000 investment, Metricon are backing two trade-based and two leadership-focused scholarships.

“These data releases aren’t unrelated, to bring Australia out of the housing crisis we need to drastically increase the supply of housing, and we can’t do that while we’re simultaneously suffering through a labour shortage,” Master Builders Australia chief executive officer Denita Wawn said.

“We urgently need governments to look at solutions to increase the number of tradies, increase the number of apprentices, and help Australian builders increase supply so we can come out the other side of this housing crisis,.”