Fears are growing of another skills shortage in the WA mining industry potentially driving a wages explosion as confidence and activity return to the sector.

Industry leaders are alarmed by a dramatic and sustained fall in students studying mining courses.

And the crunch is set to be exacerbated by the last year’s abolition of 457 visas and the removal of mining professions from the skilled migration occupation list, making it harder for mining companies to hire foreign workers.

Many of the swarm of interstate workers who moved to WA for the last mining boom have returned to their home States and are working in other sectors.

Northern Star Resources chief executive Stuart Tonkin also noted Aussies’ love of travel meant many talented workers were leaving the country and not returning.

“I’m less worried about the cost (salary) pressures than our actual ability to get workers of the calibre we require,” he said.

Miners such as Independence Group and Gold Fields have already reported wages pressure in their efforts to attract and retain staff, with the problem expected to worsen.

Mr Tonkin conceded the industry needed to do better at managing its workforce through the peaks and troughs of commodity cycles.

“It’s important to have trainees and graduates throughout the cycle because it can take four to seven years for them to learn and develop into useful workers,” he said.

The industry also needed to work hard to change negative, outdated perceptions about mining being unsafe, dirty and unsustainable.

“The attitudes towards safety, the environment, rehabilitation and recycling in the mining sector today did not exist when I started in my career 25 years ago — now they’re embedded,” Mr Tonkin said.

Curtin University vice-chancellor Deborah Terry said the university hadn’t done as well as it needed to in attracting students to mining courses.

“There are exciting things happening in the sector and a huge range of opportunities with modern mining methods, automation and drones,” she said.

“But as soon as there is a downturn in an industry like mining, it immediately impacts on student enrolments.”

WA School of Mines Kalgoorlie director Sam Spearing said student enrolments were down 50 per cent since the peak in 2013 and hadn’t bounced despite the industry picking up.

The decline in students studying mining engineering was particularly acute but enrolments were down across the board with fewer studying metallurgy, mine surveying, geology and petroleum engineering.

“We’re having trouble attracting the best and the brightest,” he said.

Professor Spearing said the Government, industry, TAFE and universities needed better co-ordination to encourage students into so-called STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths).

He also highlighted a need for gender equality in the industry, with only 15 per cent female representation in WASM’s mining and metallurgical engineering course.

A national survey of 1061 senior high school and first-year university students by YouthInsight this month found 59 per cent of respondents knew nothing about mining careers and only 30 per cent had any interest in the sector.

Gavin Lind, executive director of the Minerals Tertiary Education Council at the Minerals Council, said workers in the mining sector were younger, better trained, higher skilled and better paid than other sectors, with an average weekly pay of $2678 — 65 per cent higher than the national average.

“We need to tell our story better to make young people and their parents aware of the tremendous opportunities on offer, including world-leading innovation,” he said.

Industry-sponsored not-for-profit group Earth Science WA was set up in 2006 to engage students in STEM subjects in primary and secondary schools and help teachers better teach the subjects.

Chief executive Jo Watkins said the organisation used hands-on activities to show students that STEM subjects weren’t as technical and confronting as they thought.

Association of Mining and Exploration Companies chief executive Warren Pearce attributed the problem to the boom/bust nature of mining and said education and training needed to be counter-cyclical.

Rio Tinto struck a deal with South Regional TAFE last year to ensure its colleges trained students to work in the mines of the future with a focus on automation.

Source: The West Australian, Monday 28th May, 2018