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Education is the key to sustaining Australia’s resource boom, according to Professor Lyn Beazley, the Chief Scientist of WA.
Speaking at The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering’s 2007 Symposium, Resources Boom: Opportunities and Consequences, Professor Beazley encouraged further investment in the education sector.
The symposium included speakers from Europe, China and Japan; representatives of the major mining houses, and the most perceptive researchers, entrepreneurs, bureaucrats and industry leaders discussing the upside and downside of the resources boom.
“Western Australia has prospered through the interactions within a skilled, educated work force. However there are increasing shortages of professionals within the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.
“Investment in the education of students from pre-primary school through to universities and beyond in these disciplines can only be achieved by providing first-rate teachers, materials, infrastructure, and opportunities,” Professor Beazley said.
Ms Beazley believes that such investment will provide Western Australia with its own supply of world class expertise and the potential to further reduce unemployment in the state, particularly in the aboriginal community.
Despite an active skilled migration program to meet resource needs in the state, the Professor believes importing workers is not a long term solution.
Support and incentives to teachers of STEM disciplines and STEM graduates would help to attract and retain the expertise required to educate the workforce of the future.
“Such a strategy will extend the resource boom and ensure Australia is well placed beyond it,” Professor Beazley said.
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