WANTED: Apprenticeships for Bush Regenerators!

Our industry needs skilled, qualified and motivated people…and plenty of them.

You may not know it, but CLM quietly slipped off the traineeship eligibility list in recent years.

Does this matter?  Who cares?

We all should!

I am currently an employer running the company Bushland Management Solutions, trading as Hills Bushcare. We have had a long standing policy of encouraging and promoting staff to the do the TAFE bush regeneration course, now changed to Certificate III in Conservation and Ecosystem Management.

Over a long period of time successive governments of all persuasions have made the criteria for traineeship support so restrictive that we haven’t had anyone eligible for formal traineeship support so we have just had ad hoc arrangements with individual staff to undertake the formal qualification.  Finally last year I had someone who fit the criteria for a traineeship, and guess what?  CLM was no longer included as a Traineeship.

So what can we do and why should we bother?

Because CLM workers are just as essential as other skilled trades, but we are not big enough or loud enough, or angry enough as an industry to be noticed, unless someone wants to plant a tree for a koala before an election.

Well now is your chance to get loud and be noticed.

The Federal Government is reviewing Apprenticeships.  Note that this is part of the problem as Traineeships come a distant second, but are included under the Apprenticeship umbrella.

If you want to help, please go to the link below:

Consultation on the Australian Apprenticeships Priority List – Department of Employment and Workplace Relations

Provide a written submission and/or feedback on the discussion paper
by 5pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time, 17 October 2025.

Demand that Conservation and Ecosystem Management trainees be made a priority industry for training support, point out the general low pay and casualisation of the industry and the difficulty students have in enrolling in formal training without more government support for access to training, and make your opinions heard.

Please don’t get me started on the current online delivery option for the course, as that’s a rant for another cranky morning where I haven’t had my coffee.

Yours sincerely

Frank Gasparre, Hills Bushcare