Northern Territory Report - October 2009

Nationally we are undertaking investigations as to ways of consolidating CCF branch financial reporting and statutory reporting as one entity. For the NT this would be a boon, as it often feels we are reporting to the level of complexity of Rio Tinto on a quarter of a million dollar budget.
The new board comprises much of the existing members and a continuity of executive, with Pat Coleman (Top End Linemarkers) as president, Tony Hillier (Earthbuilt) as vice president and Damien Collis (Steelcon) as honorary treasurer.
Welcome aboard new board members Stephen Thompson, Downer EDI and Sam Gerrard, Transcon Australia. Their contributions over the next 12 months will be valuable as the board replenishes its resources, to grow and develop the civil construction sector throughout the Territory.
Optimism surrounds the Territory industry environment currently. As the prospects of major scale gas industry developments get closer to investment decisions, the Territory’s mining sector repositions itself to reinvest and gear up, again as the threats of the GFC diminish and the substantial risks surrounding the sector are mitigated, and the dedicated stimulus and other government driven investments take place.
Politically the environment is still fragile, but the Chief Minister has not stepped back from obligations to drive the economy forward and ostensibly lead the country in avoiding the worst of economic downturn possibilities.
The branch will start positioning itself for the preparatory months leading to formulation of the Territory Budget, and there is much that is cemented in in this regard, prior to the Christmas break. We have had strong influence ultimately on the total level of public investment in civil infrastructure and again will promote powerful and well structured argument and evidence to capture treasury and cabinet commitments into 2010/11.
Training in the Territory is not delivered from within the branch, as in most other states. We have no civil train – registered training organisation business unit: our RTO associate members making up the outsourced service delivery model that prevails in our environment.
We of course, have no significant internal capacities but to otherwise run this way, and we rely very much on the cooperative framework that exists in the training sector through branch membership. But conversely, we capture virtually zero shares of training dollars and administrative overheads liberally applied to training, the local RTOs providing good service for good profit. This is fine, however much branch effort and advocacy is expended in promoting the training cause to governments, and it is a struggle and an uphill battle, for sometimes little reward.
In this environment, we have persisted with commitments for certificate IV civil construction operations and supervision courses to be structured as a response to a concerted statement of need by our industry here. Against the Federal Government’s Productivity Places Program, a round of October 2009 bidding may produce outcomes for course commencements early next year. And we are presently moving in a round of recognised prior learning assessments at the certificate IV level.
One of the issues is the direct bidding for and receipt of Commonwealth funding administered by the states/territories by the RTOs; which requires encouragement, support and direction of industry groups to ensure alignment of those bids to our immediate and strategic training needs.
In this regard, the branch will facilitate a round table of dialogue to determine the most efficient and accountable manner in which RTOs can organise to deliver the best products and services, attract expert partners in delivery of specialised units and to agree, over and above the funder’s requirements, what the performance and outcome criteria are appropriate to the particular programs being run.
For our certificate IV level initiatives, agreement prior to formulation of bids will be important. Our support, as the voice of the civil construction industry, for individual PPP bids will be conditioned on good understanding of our needs and the levels of commitment to innovation, flexibility and performance of our member RTOs. We have great confidence going forward.