The BCA welcomes the opportunity to respond to all five interim reports developed as part of the Productivity Commission’s Five Pillars of Productivity Inquiries. We are a member-led organisation, and our submissions reflect engagement with those members and the expertise and practical experience they bring.
This submission focuses on our response to the report Building a skilled and adaptable workforce released for comment on 11 August 2025. We provide our detailed observations and recommendations in response to the draft recommendations and information requests. These are summarised below:
- We support practical reforms to reduce excessive and inconsistent occupational entry requirements, broaden alternative entry pathways, and review qualifications to address skills shortages, improve labour mobility, and lift workforce participation. We encourage the use of the $900 million National Productivity Fund to incentivise states and territories to support the establishment of national occupational licensing frameworks, which has been a longstanding reform challenge.
- We back a nationally consistent, quality-assured platform for teaching materials, with a strong focus on foundational literacy and numeracy. In addition, we support a coordinated national approach to educational technology and artificial intelligence, alongside long-overdue reforms to streamline and improve the transparency of recognition of prior learning (RPL) and credit transfer across the system.
- The NSW Digital Skills and Workforce Compact and the Institute of Applied Technology – Digital are gold-standard mechanisms that develop industry-led training that is well suited to workforce upskilling. The BCA recommends scaling the NSW Skills Compact nationally and funding short form training across all sectors.