GAP believes that re-industrialisation is the best way of creating lasting full-time employment with positions for skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers. This, combined with training Australians rather than importing skills, tax and economic reform, rescinding of harmful treaties and industrial relations policy based on fairness and equality for all Australian employees and employers will enable our manufacturing, business and rural industries to compete on truly level playing field.
GAP will make creating employment and the reducing of unemployment and all its associated social ills our major objective.
GAP’s Industrial Relations policy is based on fairness and equality for all parties concerned, with emphasis on protection of employees and contractors’ entitlements while also protecting employers from dishonest, disruptive, unsuited employees, or abuse of power by Unions or union officials. The important role unions have played in Australia is recognised and the continuing need for workers to have access to assistance to negotiate their wages and conditions is acknowledged; membership of unions will continue to be voluntary.
If a country has an agricultural base from which to feed the people, industrial infrastructure, a skilled manufacturing base, abundant energy and mineral resources and a healthy united and educated population, it has the essentials to become self-sufficient. If that country is barren of opportunity for its young, unable to care for its aged, dependent on goods and finance from foreigners and unemployment among its workforce is rife, the problem is political ineptitude and economic mismanagement.
Training programs based on the needs of industry and business providing indentured apprenticeships, to further skills and higher education. We need to return to indentured apprenticeship-based training, recent governments have discouraged it, due to their policy of dismantling our industrial base, these positions have not been available, so most kids have been forced to stay on at school, just to keep the unemployment numbers down. The ideal age for apprenticeship is after third year at high school, at the age of 15-16 years, an age receptive to discipline and learning. The majority are now forced to stay another 2 years at school, at which time it is usually too late for them to successfully enter a trade, most are not suitable for an academic career, so we have this huge problem with youth unemployment. This training can be implemented from workshops by retired qualified persons to assist in teaching the hands-on skills.
Nursing is a typical example, many girls who would have made excellent nurses, have been lost due to the disbandment of on the job apprenticeship training, for academic training. This is reflected in the shortage of nurses, and drop in standards of care in hospitals.
Engineering trades have suffered the same problem, and we are fast losing all our skills as the older generations retire and there is none to hand them down to. Apprenticeship training is the ideal base to go on to almost any field, or position, most of our top engineers started out this way.
