In November last year the Federal Government announced a $61 million Defence skilling initiative incorporating 14 programs to grow defence industry’s productivity, skills and capability. One initiative is a strategy to identify opportunities to effectively redeploy skilled workers to fill employment gaps in the defence industry sector.

Within weeks there was an opportunity to implement this initiative with a Hunter Skills Forum held in Newcastle for Boeing employees affected by the recent downsizing of that business. The Forum placed former Boeing employees in direct contact with other defence industry companies keen to recruit staff.

DMO Director Industry Skilling, Mrs Robyn Wall, said 13 companies were represented at the Skills Forum conducted in Newcastle on 16 December 2008.

“Approximately 40 of the 60 plus employees affected by the Boeing downsizing on 2 December attended the Skills Forum,” Mrs Wall said. “By the end of the three hour session, eight firm job offers had been made with the strong possibility of further offers being made later.”

The Skills Forum was sponsored by the DMO and coordinated by the Hunter Economic Development Corporation (HEDC). Defence Project Manager for the HEDC, Ms Kyleigh Laughlan, said that, from a development perspective and on a regional level, the forum successfully brought together companies that traditionally were competitors to help workers who found themselves unemployed.

“It is wonderful to see local industry supporting the skilled labour we have in the region,” Ms Laughlan said. “That and being prepared to work together is what I am happiest about.”

Ms Laughlan said the companies taking advantage of the forum recognised the high skill sets within the Hunter region and the need to not lose them to other regions or other industries.

“I received phone calls within half an hour of sending out the initial email inviting industry to participate in the forum, asking how we can help and what can we do to support this,” she said. “I was asked: are they ready now? I have positions ready to go now.”

The Industry Skilling Enhancement Package seeks to partner with defence industry and other agencies to expand the pool of appropriately skilled people from which the defence industry sector can recruit; enhance work and career pathways in the defence industry sector; and address specific defence industry capability skills gaps, to ensure there's not compromise to the Australia Defence Force’s capability.