Peter Hobson and Alasdair Pal
Canberra (Reuters) – Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Friday announced cash incentives to attract apprentices to the overcrowded construction industry, adding billions of dollars in extra spending ahead of a general election due within months.
Construction apprentices will be offered a cash incentive of $10,000 ($6,281), Albanese said in a speech on Friday seen as setting the stage for an election that must be held by May.
“Many trainees have said they could earn more stacking shelves in a supermarket – and too many are leaving training because they can’t afford to stay,” he said in an address to the National Press Club in the capital Canberra.
“Our government wants to encourage more Australians to learn the trade and stay in construction.”
The incentives will cost about $627 million over four years, aiming to hit the government’s target of building 1.2 million homes over the next five years.
Decades of booming demand and tight supply have made Australia’s housing market among the most affordable in the world, with successive governments failing to hit housebuilding targets.
Housing is the biggest contributor to the rising cost of living in Australia, which is expected to be one of the main campaign issues for parties in the upcoming election.
Albanese’s centrist Labor Party has a majority in the lower house of parliament but is closely trailing the conservative opposition coalition in polls released this week, meaning it can rely on smaller parties like the Greens to form a government if it emerges as the largest party in this year’s elections. elections, but fails to secure a second majority.
Albanese’s encouraging announcement of accepting the government’s pledges in recent months before $15 billion.
They include $7.2 billion to upgrade Queensland’s main highway, $3 billion to upgrade the country’s broadband network and $2 billion to support the aluminum industry.
($1 = 1.5921 Australian dollars)
