Orange Precision Metalcraft boss Mark Thompson, MP Phil Donato call for more to be done to encourage trades careers

"It seemed like a good idea to me," Mr Thompson said.

The chair of Orange manufacturing collective Regional Engineering Network for Welding, Engineering, Logistics and Delivery (RENWELD) and owner of Orange Precision Metalcraft, Mr Thompson and his industry are crying out for qualified staff and frustrated by the obstacles to training their own.

"We've all got the same [staffing] issues," Mr Thompson said, referring to his RENWELD counterparts.

"One of our major missions was to actually try and develop more staff that we could all utilise and that hasn't changed. It's still the biggest problem we've held since we started RENWELD."

Mr Thompson, who employs about 35 people across trades and administration at OPM, has put on three apprentices each year for as long as he can remember.

He said he's noticed it's getting harder to attract quality candidates for apprenticeships and when he does get them, there are hoops to jump through providing their industry training.

"Kids don't seem to want to do this sort of work," Mr Thompson said.

"I've been to the schools and I've spoken to the teachers, I've been to the schools and addressed the students, I've gone into the metalwork classes after I've spoken to the teachers and I've sat down in the class with the kids and told them all about it - this is what the metal trade is about.

"I think I've done everything I can possibly think of to get kids involved."

Mr Thompson said roughly a quarter of the students he spoke to were interested.

"Where it gets lost is this: there's a perception in the market-place that apprentices don't earn a lot of money and parents want their kids to either go to college or go and get some sort of further education or whatever the case may be that's going to give them a better opportunity to earn money.

"For some reason, the trades don't seem to be perceived as lucrative and a lot of it comes from the parents, they want more for their kids - you don't want to be a tradie, you don't want to be down in the dirt.

"The reality is, that's not true."

Mr Thompson says he pays above award wages to his apprentices but apart from that, they can be earning money while studying and at the end of four-year indenture, won't have a Higher Education Contribution Scheme debt like their university-educated counterparts.

"They can earn very good money."

He also encourages girls to look into manufacturing as a career.

"We've got a standout at the moment, Makaela Hobson. She's terrific. I would promote the employ of girls in the trades any day of the week."

Apart from recruitment, training provided another hurdle when TAFE changed its scheduling from block release (two weeks of study, three times a year) to one day a week, no easy task when the course was run from the Wetherill TAFE campus in western Sydney.

"I said to my HR lady, go and find a teacher, we'll hire them and get them to come up here, we'll teach them in our shop," Mr Thompson said.

"It seemed like a good idea to me, not to them. So I thought my hands are tied here, I've got to take this to the next level."

Mr Thompson contacted Manufacturing Skills Australia head Leon Drury and also recruited Member for Orange Phil Donato and he reckons within a week, TAFE's block release program was restored thanks to the pair's lobbying.

Mr Donato said it's obvious more needs to be done to attract people to the trades, not only reinvigorating TAFE, but by putting more emphasis on it as a HSC subject.

"There's not many schools that offer metal work in years 11 and 12 because it's not an ATAR subject.

"Traditionally schools would have electives for metalwork so kids would take it and then feed into the industry but that's not happening as much now."

Mr Donato said Trundle Central School was a case in point, with a metalwork course well attended thanks to a willing instructor.

"When you've got a school that pushes it, kids get interested in it and it encourages them to take up a trade."

He also agreed there was an expectation to go to university but said that was not a good fit for a lot of young people.

"I think the government needs to do more marketing, and awareness campaigns. We see a lot of ads on TV for universities, Defence Force but we don't see really anything in your face about trades and apprenticeships and making it appealing."

He added a pathway into the trades for personnel transitioning from the Australian Defence Force could also be explored.

"TAFE has been gutted over the last decade at least. Resources are stretched, teachers are stretched. It's not like it used to be.

"But I think the schools have got to play a part.

"It's not an easy fix but we've got to try and do something. If we don't, in another 20 years, there's going to be hardly any manufacturing at all in terms of metal engineering and stuff like that, taking place in Australia."

In the meantime, Mr Thompson will continue to call for more to be done to attract people to the trades, with numbers expected to get worse in the near future as building and manufacturing post COVID ramps.

The Australian Government's skills priority list released last year showed shortages are most common in the technicians and trades occupations, with 42 per cent of those occupations assessed as in shortage.

"I've got contracts going from everywhere from the Victorian border right up to central Queensland all the way out to Katherine in the Territory," Mr Thompson said.

"And I got a staff shortage everywhere I look.

"There's lots of things that get in our way - lack of material, lack of staff, lack of transport. There's just lots of things that throw hurdles in our way but that's just business, increasingly its the staffing thing that is causing my biggest issues."