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We're going to be hearing a lot about jobs and skills this fortnight. Right now it's National Skills Week, in which vocational education and training is celebrated. Next week, it's the national skills and jobs summit, called by the new federal government to address the crippling skills shortage. "It's hard to get good staff these days" has become a national distress call since the lockdowns ended and the economy roared back to life. Fact is, it's hard to get any staff, good, bad or indifferent. And it's only two-and-a-half years since we saw those heartbreaking scenes at the start of the pandemic: the thousands lined up outside Centrelink when the economy was suddenly shut down and a huge chunk of the population was without work. Now, we have the lowest unemployment rate in half a century. And we have businesses reducing operations or even contemplating shutting down entirely because they can't get staff.

We're short of construction managers, civil engineers, aged care workers, chefs, sparkies, nurses, kindy teachers and, as always, chefs. Out in rural and regional Australia, we'd add doctors to that list because we're all to accustomed to needing to see one today but being told we can't get an appointment until late next week at the earliest.

Faced with this sort of crisis, which has the potential to badly damage the economy, it's tempting to look for simplistic remedies. Matt Kean, the NSW Treasurer, did so when he called on the federal government to open the skilled migration spigot. Great in theory but how does that response play into the other big problem Australia faces - the housing crisis? Where would these skilled migrants live? Regional staff shortages have been fuelled by a lack of affordable housing for would-be workers. Making one crisis worse with a quick fix for another makes no sense.

Pay workers more, others suggest, and they might just stay in their jobs. Again, great in theory but recent wage growth data, although on the uptick, came in under the forecast and was still going backwards in real terms when inflation was accounted for. "Enterprise bargaining is not working," the PM told a press conference in Sydney yesterday before putting the boot into the former government's "policy of putting downward pressure on wages". Of course, some are concerned that too much upward movement on wages will fuel the other economic bogeyman, inflation.

Albanese downplayed any expectations the jobs and skills summit would be in the same league of the Hawke government's national economic summit, which produced the prices and incomes accord and, along with it, Medicare, a swag of social wage reform and compulsory superannuation. He deflected criticism of Kevin Rudd's 2020 summit, dismissed by many at the time as an exercise in elitist windbaggery, reminding those present the landmark NDIS did roll out of it.

Much rides on the success of this summit, not least brokering a compact between labour and capital like that championed by Paul Keating, which sees wages rise along with productivity.

"We want to see wages increase over time and we want it to occur in a way that is cooperative. I see that there are common interests between unions and employers. It has been a theme of mine for a long, long period of time," Albanese told the media. The meeting of the minds over two days next week will not produce meaningful change overnight. But it will need to be more than a talkfest, an exercise which hopefully fosters a collaborative approach to the economic challenge we all face and charts a sensible, centrist course through it.

HAVE YOUR SAY: Are you confident the Jobs and Skills Summit will solve our labour shortage problems? Did the economic revival after the pandemic take you by surprise? Were you a jobseeker in the 1970s, when unemployment was last this low? If so, did you manage to negotiate a good wage? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

- Australia's largest ever shipment of the deadly opioid fentanyl has been intercepted in Melbourne. More than 11 kilograms of pure powdered fentanyl and 30 kilograms of methamphetamine was found inside an industrial wooden lathe at the Port of Melbourne in December last year. It took authorities two weeks in February to safely remove and analyse the drugs, which were sent from Canada.

- Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will publicly release a review into the Chinese-leased Port of Darwin. A defence review of the port conducted under the former Liberal government and handed to then defence minister Peter Dutton found no national security grounds to overturn the 99-year-lease to Chinese company Landbridge. That review is reportedly being kept secret by the Department of Defence, after a failed freedom of information request led to only the release of talking points handed to the former government. The PM says the subsequent review will be made public.

- Ampol is betting on more electric vehicle drivers fast-charging at service station forecourts as the petroleum company navigates the energy transition, but is less upbeat about prospects for hydrogen. Managing director and CEO Matt Halliday is also cautious about the emissions standard the government is starting to talk about as a way of getting more electric vehicles into Australia.

THEY SAID IT: "Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased." - Adam Smith

YOU SAID IT: The Economist said it most succinctly with its headline "Cabinet me-shuffle" over its story on the secret Morrison power grab. You have some great comments too.

"I don't think the Liberal Party should feel embarrassed by Morrison's antics and bad behaviour," says Linda. "They weren't involved. They should have already been embarrassed for choosing a lying, deceitful, incompetent, never-my-fault prime minister in the first place. They should also feel embarrassed over choosing profits and big business over the ordinary people. Morrison is who he is. Anyone expecting him to be serious about taking responsibility is spitting in the wind. If Liberals expect any better, they should chuck him out."

Of course, Morrison has defenders. Chris is one: "How is it a scandal when Morrison adds a couple of ministries to his heavy workload as a precaution during a pandemic, unused, while you say nothing about Whitlam seizing 27 ministries and acting like a real dictator with real consequences? Not to mention Rudd micromanaging everything. How's their legacy? All OK? You need some perspective? Even a squidion. How's it going to look when the solicitor-general is forced to admit Morrison did nothing out of order and that Whitlam and Rudd wouldn't or didn't do? Do as they say, not as they did?" Chris is right. Whitlam and his deputy Lance Barnard held between them 27 portfolios but openly and for just two weeks until the Labor parliamentary caucus could meet and elect the ministry. Rudd's micro-management? Yes, that didn't end well, did it?

And Ross thinks the whole thing is overblown: "Echidna and most of the hand wringing brigade are dead wrong to assert 'the rest of Australia take it very seriously'. Most Australians who have a life don't give a stuff about what Morrison did (and he did wrong) as there are more important matters that should be addressed." Not sure they don't give a stuff but agree 100 per cent there are other issues that need to be addressed. That's one reason the revelations are so damaging; they've taken the wind out of the opposition's sails and become a giant national distraction.

Stuart gives the benefit of the doubt: "We were never sure of how significant the pandemic might have become - affecting important ministers as well. My read is that Morrison was ensuring the continuance of government in the event that significant people were belayed. What I am having trouble understanding is that all ministers are appointed at the prime minister's pleasure and all ministerial decisions are also subject to his veto. So, yes, it was legal and also unnecessary."

Ian has a suggestion: "Let ScoMo pick his favourite meme and it can used as his official portrait in Parliament House. No need to waste any money on a portrait painter, but never let anyone forget how he ignored unwritten conventions to gain power over his colleagues and coalition partners."

Allan says Morrison isn't the only problem for the Coalition: "Seems Dutton and his colleagues are attempting to defend the opportunist, Morrison, by claiming no laws were broken. Seems none of them have any morals. Opportunism is their vision. Barnaby virtually admits self-benefit drives the Nationals."

Happy to see you're still responding to Friday's questions about alcohol and the books you're reading.

David's recommendation: "I have just finished Lasseter's Gold by Warren Brown. An excellent story of one of the most controversial explorations in 1932 looking for the reef of gold said to be located in central Australia by Harold Bell Lasseter. The reef was never found, on that expedition or subsequently. Does it exist? We will probably never really know. A top read, highly recommended for lovers of Australian history."

And from Horst: "Tea was my tipple too and I'm working through Hannah Arendt's tome The Origins of Totalitarianism. Her thorough analysis of Stalin's and Hitler's regimes gives you goosebumps when you recognise the parallels with Xi Jinping, Putin and even wanna-be dictators like Trump and Morrison. We're just lucky that the last two are so incompetent and the latter has few followers left."

Four decades in the media, working in print and television. Formerly editor of the South Coast Register and Milton Ulladulla Times. Based on the South Coast of NSW.

Four decades in the media, working in print and television. Formerly editor of the South Coast Register and Milton Ulladulla Times. Based on the South Coast of NSW.

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