Australia’s dearth of mining graduates a threat to powerhouse industry, BHP’s Geraldine Slattery warns

BHP’s Australia chief has warned the country’s supply of mining workers is under threat, and bemoaned its permitting systems as a laggard compared to global peers.

Briefing a Melbourne Mining Club lunch on the risks facing the nation’s resources sector, Geraldine Slattery said the industry was dealing with structural issues in skilled labour and a lack of new technology investment, also noting Australia was not “keeping pace as an attractive place to invest”.

“We cannot change the rocks we have, but we can change the enablers and settings in their discovery, extraction and development,” she said.

The BHP executive sounded the alarm that a large chunk of the engineering workforce is due to retire in the next 10 years, and that they were not going to be replaced based on the rate of graduates in mining-related courses.

“Nearly 50 per cent of the skilled engineering workforce globally will retire in the next decade,” Ms Slattery said.

“And we know that we do not have enough graduates in mining-related fields to replace them.”

The BHP Australia president said the lack of new workers in the field was nothing to do with what they were being paid. Rather, there needed to be an expansion of the talent pool.

Getting more younger people interested in a career in mining is viewed as a big challenge by the sector.

She also said bringing new talent into the workforce should be treated as a national competitiveness policy.

“Part of the solution lies in expanding Australia’s workforce participation and this highlights the fundamental importance of the entire industry’s work to build a more diverse and inclusive workforce,” she said.

“Women now make up over 37 per cent of our employee workforce globally. This has not happened by chance.”

Ms Slattery indicated both the private and public sector had a role to play in expanding the workforce, and lauded the Federal Government’s efforts to expand free TAFE courses as “commendable”.

And she also reinforced the mining giant’s concerns regarding Australia’s permitting processes, and said they needed to be tightened to keep Australia competitive against other mining nations such as the US, Canada and Chile.

“For Australia the principles should be clear: put in place a risk-based permitting system that ensures processing timelines are certain and outcomes are reliable.,” the BHP executive said.

“In short, we must modernise our permitting system in line with the changing nature of competition.”

And other countries had already “figured out” that inefficient regulation caused project delays, according to Ms Slattery.

“The US introduced an Energy Permitting Reform Act this year, and the incoming Trump administration is continuing the conversation about permitting reform.”

She also referenced Canada’s new ‘Federal Permitting Coordinator’ for growth projects, and said that the Government in Chile had also recognised the need for a better permitting system.