Précis

There are startling and credible predictions that more than five million Australian jobs will simply disappear in the next 15 years, as a result of technology. That's 40% of the jobs that exist in Australia today.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Answering that question is only going to get harder as many of the jobs our kids will do haven't been invented yet. And if parents believe that steering their kids towards "safe" professions like accountancy will guarantee them a job, they're in for a shock.

"Machine learning and artificial intelligence in particular are actually solving jobs that we thought traditionally were very highly qualified jobs, people like lawyers and doctors and accountants and bankers...It’s eating out the middle of the job market." - Robotics Pioneer

There will be winners and losers in some surprising areas as more and more jobs become automated or operated by intelligent computers.  

"What’s happening is the same thing that happened to blue collar work in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties is going to happen to white collar work...People need to start  understanding the impact that it’s going to have on them." - Management Consultant

It’s good news for baristas and personal trainers, but not for real estate agents. And the days of long haul truck drivers may be numbered.  

"I think the first thing on the agenda is really going to be driving autonomously between Sydney and Melbourne on the highway. It’s not hard to imagine and indeed the technology exists for dedicating a lane and saying this is going to be for autonomous trucks." - Robotics Pioneer

The loss of these jobs will be challenging for the existing workforce as there may simply not be enough jobs to go round. But the greater fear is that we're not preparing our kids for work in this technological age. Schools and universities are churning out students with qualifications for jobs that won’t exist, instead of training them for the ones that will be created.

"We’ve had incredible education in this country, but there is no-one that genuinely really thinks it’s fit for purpose now and into the future...Australia is, right now, not prepared." - Youth Advocate

We meet the kids giving up their weekends to learn the computer coding skills they say they're not being taught at school.

“I believe that coding is the next layer of literacy.” - Coding Teacher

And explore the schools who believe they're unlocking the future with innovative teaching methods and an emphasis on the so-called STEM skills, maths and science.  

Many are arguing that we must act now to change the way we educate our kids or risk them sleep walking into a world they won’t be equipped for.

“We could start working with 12 year olds today. By the time they’ve done six years of high school and they’re 18, we could genuinely have changed their trajectory if we focused on some of these education changes that need to happen and set them up and Australia up for a very different future." - Youth Advocate

School exterior

Music

00:11

School kids with robot

Girl:  Are you alive?

Robot: Not the same way as you are, but yes, I am.

Girl: How old are you?

00:15

GEOFF THOMPSON:  At the Good Shepherd primary school, north of Adelaide, students are getting to know a little robot called Pink.

00:23

Robot:  Howdy.

Girl:  Can you feel emotions?

Robot: I don’t have feelings like you but I can detect emotions.

Girl:  Are you hungry?

MONICA WILLIAMS: They really engage with the robots in a way that’s much more than we had expected

00:30

Monica Williams 100%. Super:
MONICA WILLIAMS
Association of Independent Schools SA

and the other thing is that most of the students really identify with the robot and really feel like they develop a relationship with the robot, so they do personify it, which was something we didn’t expect.

00:47

School kids around computer doing programming

Finlay: “We’re programming Pink the robot to do meditation ...

01:01

Finlay

Geoff Thompson:  So you’re teaching the robot to meditate by squeezing a lemon?

Finlay:  Yes that’s just the first part, there’s lot more to do.

01:11

Maddison at computer

GEOFF THOMPSON, REPORTER: Ten year old Finlay and 11 year old Maddison are utterly absorbed by the challenge of teaching Pink what to do, by programming the computer which controls her.

Maddison: You get to create what you want it to do.

01:18

Maddison and Finlay

Finlay: It’s a bit cool.

Thompson:  It’s fun?

Finlay:  Yeah.

01:36

Maddison

Maddison: It’s lots of fun. We’ve got the power to control her.

01:40

Kids programming robot

Thompson: What are you teaching Pink to do?

01:44

Olivia:  We’re programming her to do the actions to Wheels on the Bus ...

01:51

GEOFF THOMPSON: Four schools in South Australia are using Pink to help kids learn computer coding.

01:58

Robot moving on floor of classroom

It’s a skill they’ll need to control technology and compete with it for the jobs of the future.

02:05

OLIVIA COLALANCIA: It’s kind of weird thinking about it because there’s a lot of little children who say

02:12

Olivia and others at computer

I want to be a teacher, but then you kind of think what if robots take over the teaching area.

02:20

Olivia. Super:
OLIVIA COLALANCIA

You’ve to work out what type of job a robot can’t take over.

02:27

Kids around computer

RYAN MATTNER: A lot of the jobs, if they  get done by robots,

02:36

Ryan with others at computer. Super:
RYAN MATTNER

you still need to code them to do it. So there’ll still be jobs to code them, that’s why I think it’s important to learn how to do this stuff.

02:40

Nathan. Super:
NATHAN BECKER

NATHAN BECKER: If you get it right, it’s like a reward, for you to see something in action what you’ve actually done.

02:48

Robot singing

[Robot sings]

02:55

School kids after robot task

Thompson: What do you think?

Olivia:  That was good. Relieved.

Ryan: Very relieved that we got it work.

Thompson:  Is it exciting?

Olivia: Yes. Definitely. It didn’t stuff it up, so that’s good.

03:13

Robot

MONICA WILLIAMS: If they’re going to be in a world where there are already robots, and there’s going to be more in the future,

03:30

Monica Williams 100%. Super:
MONICA WILLIAMS
Association of Independent Schools SA

having understanding of how they can be used in an ethical way and to have an understanding of how jobs can be created around those robots and what’s possible,

03:37

Robot

has to be the best way to help them with the thinking and the sort of learning they need to be well-equipped for the world they are going into.

03:46

Montage: Aerial/City time-lapse

Music

03:53

GEOFF THOMPSON: Today almost 12 million of us have a job, but Australia’s Committee for Economic Development predicts that technological change could eliminate five million jobs within the next 15 years.

04:00

Martin on street with smart phone

Stephen Martin is CEDA’s chief executive.

STEPHEN MARTIN CHIEF EXECUTIVE, CEDA: What we did was apply an analysis, with all things being equal, what will be the likelihood of jobs disappearing in Australia over the next 10 years,

04:13

Martin 100%. Super:
PROF. STEPHEN MARTIN
Chief Executive, CEDA

and what we found is something like 40 per cent of current jobs, as they are structured at the moment, are likely to disappear, but that in regional areas that could be as high as 60 per cent. 

04:26

Robotic manufacturing montage

Music

04:35

GEOFF THOMPSON: Machines have been replacing human workers since the Industrial Revolution.

04:42

Music

04:47

GEOFF THOMPSON:  Since then, any routine repeatable task has been an endangered job.

04:50

Automated agriculture

Music

04:56

GEOFF THOMPSON:   Now automation has broken free of the factory to overtake more complex arenas of human labour.

04:59

Port Botany GVs/Automation

Last year, the introduction of robots at Sydney’s Port Botany cut the number of dock workers in half.

05:07

Music

05:14

HUGH DURRANT-WHYTE: There are still people working on the port, but they’re much, much fewer.

05:18

Durrant-Whyte 100%. Super:
PROF. HUGH DURRANT-WHYTE
University of Sydney

They drive cranes, they sit in the control tower oversighting what’s going on, they deal with exceptions, they deal with maintenance, things like that. The main bulk of the operations are automated. 

05:22

Port Botany automation

I will say it is important because it’s driven efficiency and we now have at Port Botany arguably the most efficient, most technically integrated container terminal in the world.  And if I said that 20 years ago about Port Botany I would have been laughed out of the building.

05:32

Time lapse. Durrant-Whyte on bench with laptop

GEOFF THOMPSON: This is the man leading Australia’s robot revolution. Hugh Durrant-Whyte helped automate the ports in Port Botany and Brisbane.

05:48

Automated vehicles, Pilbara mining.

On the other side of the country he led the development of driverless trucks for Rio Tinto’s mines in the Pilbara.

05:59

HUGH DURRANT-WHYTE: It has been a very concerted effort to build an automated mine from all the way from the pit to the port. So you’re looking at automated drills, automated trains,

06:07

Durrant-Whyte 100%.

a completely new way of doing business, computer programs that read in data, that make automated decisions, that understand how to do maintenance and all these sorts of things. 

06:17

Driverless vehicle at Pilbara mine

And of course just to celebrate it is the fact that once you have all of that under control you can actually run the mine completely remotely.

06:25

Driverless semitrailer sequence

06:32

GEOFF THOMPSON: With driverless semi-trailers already being tested around the world, long-haul trucking jobs may soon succumb to the robot revolution.

06:38

BERNARD SALT, KPMG: There is no doubt that truck drivers I think are on the front line, they’re in one of the top ten occupations in Australia.  So I would see a significant

06:51

Bernard Salt 100%

level of structural change particularly at that occupation,

06:59

Super:
BERNARD SALT
KPMG

as the driverless vehicles make their way forward and that might be say from 2020 through to about 2035 over that 10, 15 year period. 

07:04

Driverless semitrailer

HUGH DURRANT-WHYTE: I think the first thing off the agenda is really going to be, for example

07:13

Durrant-Whyte 100%

driving autonomously between Sydney and Melbourne on the highway.  It’s not hard to imagine, and indeed the technology exists, for dedicating a lane and saying this is going to be for autonomous trucks.

07:19

Montage: ATM/Supermarket scanners/Airline check-in

GEOFF THOMPSON: Bank tellers, supermarket check-out staff and airline check-in staff have already been pushed aside by technology.

07:30

Game of Go

The next wave of automation will be driven by cognitive computers, which learn to solve complex problems by themselves.

07:41

JON WILLIAMS PwC: This year for the first time a computer has beaten the World Master of the game Go, the Asian game Go, which requires thinking about strategies to beat your opponent.

07:49

Jon Williams. Super:
JON WILLIAMS
PwC

And in winning those challenge matches  it made a couple of moves that the experts watching the game didn’t believe anyone else, any human had ever made and which they couldn’t quite understand why it had made those moves. 

08:02

And that’s possibly the future of computers, is not just doing things that we’ve told them to do better and faster but actually coming up with new ways of doing things that we wouldn’t have thought of.

08:14

Williams with smart phone in office

GEOFF THOMPSON: Jon Williams is a managing partner with the global consulting giant PwC, which predicts that 44 per cent of current Australian jobs are at risk over the next 20 years.

JON WILLIAMS: Many of today’s jobs will disappear.

08:23

Williams 100%

So there’ll be fewer of today’s jobs, but we believe that there’ll be more of tomorrow’s jobs to replace them.  Really what what’s happening is the same thing that happened to blue collar work in the seventies and eighties and nineties is going happen to white collar work in the next ten to fifteen years.

08:43

ARCHIVAL. Manufacturing/computing  montage

GEOFF THOMPSON: The Australian workforce has survived seismic shifts before. Fearing the rise of the machines is nothing new.  Four Corners was reporting on it in 1969.

09:00

Super:
4 Corners, 1969

REPORTER:  “When this circuit board learns your job, what are you going to do?

09:14

Super:
4 Corners, 1978

 GEOFF THOMPSON: And again in 1978.

REPORTER: “This is a word processor, offspring of the mating of transistor and typewriter. It makes one typist the productive equal of six.

09:18

“The salesman introduced this machine as the new accounting department. It does everything around the office except make the tea. It replaces clerks, office girls, office boys.

INTERVIEWEE:  “Jobs are going to be destroyed by a holocaust, a firestorm of technology ...”

09:31

Music

09:48

MARK WOODEN, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE: I still think you’ll find that going forward it’s the white collar professionals who are going to do well, it just won’t be the secretarial jobs but they’ve already gone.

09:57

Mark Wooden. Super:
PROF. MARK WOODEN
University of Melbourne

I mean when I started in this business there were typists, now everyone’s a typist but no one’s employed as a typist so they’re long gone.  So the routine jobs have gone.

10:03

Mark Wooden on street using smart phone

GEOFF THOMPSON: Mark Wooden from Melbourne University runs the leading survey of Australians’ work and income. He’s been tracking changes in employment trends over the past century.

10:11

Mark Wooden

MARK WOODEN: If you go back to, say, the turn of last century, 1900, we were very much dependent on farming, agriculture.

10:25

Archival. Agricultural footage.  TEXT: Year 1900
Agriculture
25% of workforce

Music

10:32

GEOFF THOMPSON: At its peak agriculture employed about one in four of all Australian workers.

10:37

Sheep farming

Music

10:41

MARK WOODEN: And then over the next century of course there was a big change. Agriculture would produce more and more and more but with fewer and fewer workers. 

10:44

Mark Wooden

Today, one in 50 Australian workers, two and a half percent of the workforce in agriculture.  So nothing, but they’re producing, I don’t know, a hundredfold more output with those fewer workers.

10:53

ARCHIVAL. Manufacturing footage. TEXT:
Year 1960
Manufacturing
28% of workforce

GEOFF THOMPSON: By 1960 manufacturing employed 28 per cent of Australian workers.

11:03

Automated car manufacture.
TEXT:  Year 2015
Manufacturing
8% of workforce

Today manufacturing employs only 8 per cent.

11:12

Mark Wooden

MARK WOODEN:  I don’t think it’s being very brave to suggest that in a decade’s time it’ll be five per cent.

11:18

Super:
PROF. MARK WOODEN
University of Melbourne

GEOFF THOMPSON: Isn’t the inexorable momentum towards an economy that needs fewer human beings working?

MARK WOODEN:  Ah, well the history of the last two hundred years says no, okay, that there are more jobs than ever before. 

11:23

Modern ‘work’ montage

We’ve become wealthier and we’re spending our money on services and we’re not spending our time doing the heavy lifting, the dirty work.

11:38

ARCHIVAL. 1980s office computing

Music

11:47

GEOFF THOMPSON: In the ‘80s white-collar workers found new jobs as Australia’s service sector grew to become the great employer it is today. It’s where more than 75 per cent of us now work.

11:51

Bernard Salt. Super:
BERNARD SALT
KPMG

BERNARD SALT: Jobs of the past have been replaced by jobs of today, jobs for today will be replaced by jobs of the future.

12:06

Salt on street using smart phone

Music

12:13

GEOFF THOMPSON: Demographer and commentator Bernard Salt is a partner at KPMG. He says if the past is any guide, there is no need to panic about the future.

12:17

Bernard Salt

BERNARD SALT: We have had digital disruption in social media, in the media, in the taxi industry, we’ve had the globalisation of manufacturing, particularly impacting Australia, and yet the evidence is there’s still more people in work.

12:28

People walking in city railway underpass

From the year 2000 to 2016 the number of workers in the Australian workforce has increased by three million.  The number of people who are unemployed comparing 2000 with 2016 has virtually not changed, so about 6 per cent compared to 5.7 per cent.  So the number of workers has increased,

12:43

Bernard Salt

the nature of work may well be changed but the kind of work has simply shifted, the middle class is doing other jobs.

13:04

Work montage

GEOFF THOMPSON: The jobs most vulnerable to computerisation include accountants, lawyers and real estate agents. Demand for beauticians, personal trainers, manicurists and intensive care nurses has been booming. The number of baristas in Australia tripled between 2006 and 2011.

BERNARD SALT: There are other jobs that are expanding and these would be jobs in

13:12

Bernard Salt

personal services for example or in technology, or in healthcare or in aged care, childcare for example. The nature of work is changing, some jobs are diminishing, other jobs are evolving. 

13:42

Thompson and Ben Simon in Data Arena

Music

13:54

GEOFF THOMPSON: Some of the jobs of the future are already here. Ben Simons is the technical director of the University of Technology’s cutting edge Data Arena. It turns vast amounts of information into an immersive 3D experience, like this glimpse

13:57

of outer space.

BEN SIMONS:  Now that we are in close, we can actually see the 36 million stars.

GEOFF THOMPSON: By visualising data from radio telescopes, he isolates young stars which may reveal secrets about the origin of the universe.

14:15

BEN SIMONS:  The stars that we’re interested in are actually these ones at the top here, these are the red stars, these are the needles in the haystack.

14:30

GEOFF THOMPSON:  So the red ones are the young ones?

BEN SIMONS:  They’re the ones we’re looking for.

14:36

It’s very hard to make sense of data when it’s a list of numbers.  I mean anyone

14:39

Ben Simons. Super:
BEN SIMONS
Technical Director,
UTS Data Arena

who’s looked at a spreadsheet knows that, you know, there’s not much that you can figure out.  As soon as we

14:47

3D Data Arena environment

turn it into an image and to make it spatial, when the data’s visual, then we can actually start to understand what we’re looking at.

14:52

Thompson with Ben Simons

GEOFF THOMPSON: In previous lives Ben’s been a CSIRO scientist and the visual effects boss on Happy Feet 2.

15:01

BEN SIMONS: I’ve done 15 feature films for the past 10 years, where in fact we do work with big data, but for entertainment.  We’re now taking a lot of those techniques and bringing it back into science and engineering so that we can take on the challenge of the big data and try to get it on the screen and make sense.

15:08

Thompson and Simons standing in Data Arena

  Music

15:24

GEOFF THOMPSON: There will be more high-tech jobs like this in the future,

15:26

Sydney skyline

but not for everyone.

15:29

CHARLES BRASS, THE FUTURES FOUNDATION: There are all sorts of jobs today I couldn’t have conceived of 40 years ago and in 40 years time there’ll be all sorts of jobs that I can’t conceive of today, that is true.

15:36

Charles Brass. Super:
CHARLES BRASS
The Futures Foundation

The question though is what sorts of jobs will they be, how many people will have access to them and how will those people be able to survive in the world through the jobs that they’re doing?

15:46

Aerial. City skyline. Night

JON WILLIAMS PwC: There was an agrarian revolution, there was an industrial revolution, there was a computer revolution and each time we’ve found ways as a as a species, as humans, to respond to that and create new jobs for people to do.

15:57

John Williams. Super:
JON WILLIAMS
PwC

Having said that it’s easy with hindsight to look back and assume and that all happened very smoothly.  If you look at the actual history at the time there was tremendous social and political upheaval caused by those shifts and I think we have to expect there’s going to be some degree of social upheaval as the world of work significantly changes over the next ten years.

16:10

Suburban backyards

TARNYA STURGISS: “I’ve been

16:28

Tarnya. Super:
TARNYA STURGISS

unemployed now for the last year, which made it really difficult because the longer I’m unemployed for the harder it gets I think.

GEOFF THOMPSON: Twenty year old Tarnya Sturgiss lives in Adelaide.

16:33

Tarnya in kitchen with mother

Like an increasing number of young Australians her working life has been a string of casual and part-time jobs.

16:43

Tarnya

TARNYA STURGISS:  So I’ve worked in tapas bars, I’ve worked in retail, I’ve worked in chemists, I’ve done chicken shops, bakeries,

16:51

sandwich making ... I started off at Coles as a check-out person,

17:02

and really enjoyed it, but I think I want more of a career now, that I’m getting a lot older, so I want to get into something where it’s going to be long term not short term, that’s where it’s difficult because I want full-time work not casual.

17:07

Thompson with Tarnya and Christine

GEOFF THOMPSON: Just like her mother Christine, Tarnya left school in year 10.

17:19

Christine

“Christine, you finished school in Year 10 like Tarnya but it wasn’t hard for you to find an opportunity?”

17:26

Super: CHRISTINE BERIMAN

CHRISTINE BERIMAN: No, because you didn’t have to have computer skills or the things that these kids need to have. They just took you on face value, of if you had what they were looking for, they gave you a chance.

17:33

GEOFF THOMPSON: Are you concerned for Tarnya’s future and the future of work for someone of her age?

17:50

CHRISTINE BERIMAN:  Absolutely. What future do our kids have if everything’s going to be run by technology. I’m really concerned, I have a younger daughter too, what future will she have? If Tarnya can’t get back into the workforce, what future do the rest of our children have.

17:56

Exterior/Interior. Re-Engage Youth Services

GEOFF THOMPSON: South Australia has been hit hard by the decline in manufacturing and has the highest unemployment in the country.

18:15

Tarnya attends Re-Engage interview with Carolyn

The suburbs around Adelaide are among the worst places for young people looking for work.

CAROLYN HABIB:  How you been going this week?

TARNYA:  Good, good. I’ve been applying for a lot more jobs than usual.

18:28

CAROLYN HABIB:  Have you found there’s a lot of jobs out there for you to apply for?

TARNYA:  No, not at the moment ...

GEOFF THOMPSON: Staff at the youth services network Re-Engage are helping Tarnya to find a career.

CAROLYN HABIB, RE-ENGAGE: With advancement in technologies,

18:38

many of the entry level jobs that traditionally went to young people are diminishing.

18:54

Carolyn.  Super:
CAROLYN HABIB
Re-Engage

If you’re young and unemployed in South Australia, it’s tough and it’s definitely getting tougher and I know compared to when I was looking for a job and finishing high school, there were jobs available in retail and hospitality that you didn’t even need qualifications for.

18:59

Tarnya looking through job ads in newspaper

Now there’s an expectation that you’re not only qualified but you’re experienced, so for young people like Tarnya it’s really challenging and it’s really disheartening.

19:14

Tony Nicholson. Super:
TONY NICHOLSON
Executive Director,
Brotherhood of St Laurence

TONY NICHOLSON, BROTHERHOOD OF ST LAURENCE: In years gone by, we have expected young people just to be able to leave school and walk into a job and then find their way in a career path. In this modern economy, that’s not the case. So it’s an important point that the transition from school to work has become much more problematic for young people than it has been in decades gone by.

19:25

Tarnya circling job ads in newspaper

In the decade ahead, we’ve got to give much more public policy attention to the issue of assisting those young people make the transition successfully.

19:53

Time lapse. City workers

CHARLES BRASS, THE FUTURES FOUNDATION: We are already at the point where there are not enough jobs for everybody who wants them in Australia.

20:03

Charles Brass

Quite apart from the 5.8 per cent who are unemployed, there are a significant

20:11

Super:
CHARLES BRASS
The Futures Foundation

number of others who have just given up trying to find a job, they’re discouraged. 

20:15

Time lapse. City workers

So we’re already at the state where we haven’t got enough jobs and it seems that it’s increasing. 

20:20

Brass on street with tablet

GEOFF THOMPSON: Futurist Charles Brass argues that if machines keep learning to do our work more cheaply than we can it’s inevitable that there won’t be enough work to go round.

20:25

Charles Brass

CHARLES BRASS: If you’re an individual business owner or a manager of a large business, your objective is to make as much money as you can out of the business that you’re in. If you can do that by employing technology and not employing human beings, you’re going to employ technology and not employ human beings.

20:39

I know there are people who say don’t worry about it, the jobs will come, but the debate is done. The evidence is in. What jobs are being created are part time, casual and fragile. There’s not enough money in those jobs to sustain people and there aren’t enough of those jobs for all the people that are falling out the bottom.

20:59

Durrant-Whyte. Super:
PROF. HUGH DURRANT-WHYTE
University of Sydney

HUGH DURRANT-WHYTE: I think one thing that’s different in the next 10 or 15 years is the fact that that automation is occurring in the middle, in the middle-classes, in the middle jobs, and not just at the bottom end.

21:18

Fundamentally, the big difference now is machine learning and artificial intelligence in particular are actually solving jobs that we thought traditionally were very highly qualified jobs, people like lawyers and doctors and accountants and bankers and these sorts of things.  They’re actually changing those.  So in fact it’s eating out the middle of the job market, rather than the bottom end.

21:27

Brett welding in workshop

GEOFF THOMPSON: A university degree was once seen as a sure pathway to a secure career, but not any more. The full-time employment rate for new graduates is now under 70 per cent, the lowest rate in more than 30 years. Some graduates like Brett Edman have to settle for low-skilled jobs outside the profession they trained for.

BRETT EDMAN: You heard people saying it wasn’t a matter of finishing your degree and then having to go out and look for work, it was a matter of

21:49

Brett Edman. Super:
BRETT EDMAN

if you’re in your final year then you start looking at what jobs are available and start applying for them and usually you get snapped up before you graduated.

22:25

Brett driving forklift

GEOFF THOMPSON: Brett Edman is an electrical engineering graduate who also speaks Mandarin after a year studying in China.

BRETT EDMAN: I came back to Australia and thinking

22:33

Brett

oh yeah it’ll be fine like there’ll be still enough jobs, but yeah like there was just nothing.

22:48

Brett at home on computer

GEOFF THOMPSON: Brett says he gave up looking after applying for more than 100 electrical engineering jobs. Now working as a casual labourer, he’s back living with his parents and back at university studying to be a science teacher.

BRETT EDMAN: I do know

22:54

Brett

that science teachers are in massive demand.  But then again that’s the exact same thing I said when

23:13

Copy of Brett’s degree on wall

I was studying engineering so hopefully that situation won’t have changed by the time I graduate this time.

23:19

Aerial. Suburbs/Traffic

Music

23:28

City workers

GEOFF THOMPSON: The latest unemployment figures confirm a trend that’s been growing for decades. Two-thirds of all new jobs created in the past three years have been part-time. Since 1980, the proportion of part-time jobs has doubled from one in six to almost one in three.

23:34

Jim Stanford. Super:
JIM STANFORD
Centre for Future Work,
Australia Institute

JIM STANFORD, CENTRE FOR FUTURE WORK, AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE: There’s no doubt from the hard numbers that the average quality and security of work in Australia has deteriorated over the last few years. 

23:57

We see the growth of what you might call precarious work in all kinds of forms.  Part-time work, temporary work, casualisation. What that means is -- not for all Australians but for more of them -- work is increasingly insecure, they don’t know when they’re going to be working, they don’t know if they’ll have enough work, and the average pay and compensation of work has declined.  So the overall trend is definitely negative.

24:07

Bernard Salt. Super:
BERNARD SALT
KPMG

BERNARD SALT, KPMG: To say that employment should be fulltime I think is quite prescriptive and quite wrong, it simply does not reflect the realities of modern Australia.  The fact of the matter is that a lot of female workers, not all, by any means, but a substantial proportion of the female workforce do not want fulltime work. It’s not being imposed by someone from beyond, this is what people actually want from the bottom up.

24:34

Montage. Hands on keyboards

Music

24:59

GEOFF THOMPSON: It’s a demand that new companies like Airtasker are cashing in on.

25:04

Airtasker office

From an office in Sydney’s CBD the web-based business connects people who need a job done with others prepared to bid for it. So far more than half a million people have used the service to create $40 million worth of work.

TIM FUNG CEO, AIRTASKER: What we’re really proud of at Airtasker is that we’re creating new job opportunities.

25:08

Tim Fung. Super:
TIM FUNG
CEO, Airtasker

Like if you wanted to find, as an example, someone who’s really good at polishing shoes and you want to find that person -- how hard is it to find them.  If we make that easier, we make it possible for someone to actually do that shoe shining job and earn some money and a transaction happens and that’s a great thing.  And without these kinds of simple platforms that job simply wouldn’t exist.

25:30

Jianitsa leaving house and into car

JIANITSA DAMARIS: At first I did pretty much anything that came up that I could do. Things like waiting in queue at a restaurant,

25:50

Jianitsa. Super:
JIANITSA DAMARIS

picking up parcels from the post office, little courier jobs here and there.

25:59

Jianitsa drives away from house

GEOFF THOMPSON: When she lost her job as a real estate agency receptionist three years ago Jianitsa Damaris signed up with Airtasker. She likes the flexibility it offers.

JIANITSA DAMARIS: It’s not locked into 9 to 5 job where I can’t get around and do what I want to do,

26:03

Jianitsa

especially at this time in my life there’s a lot of family – not needs – but I want to be there for family, for certain things they’re encountering that they need an extra hand for.

26:21

Jianitsa driving

And it just gives me that autonomy to be able to set my times, getting out and about.

26:30

Jianitsa collecting parcel

GEOFF THOMPSON: Today, Jianitsa is collecting a parcel for someone too busy to do it themselves. This Airtasker job’s only worth twenty five dollars, but she takes it because it’s on the way to a friend she wants to visit.

JIANITSA DAMARIS: It’s a bit dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, but it gives an opportunity for everyone to have a go. As far as providing income that you can forecast for,

26:37

Jianitsa

probably not. However some weeks could be far better than one other week, and it averages out well if you’re willing to take that risk.

27:05

Tim Fung in Airtasker office

27:14

TIM FUNG CEO, AIRTASKER: I think a misconception is that Airtasker is only about menial labour, that’s actually not true at all. 

27:17

Super: TIM FUNG
CEO, Airtasker

Some of the guys who have earned huge money are guys doing things like making websites.

27:25

Airtasker office

And all we are is a platform for short term labour.  And you can find people to do anything for you in that regard.

27:31

City skyline

GEOFF THOMPSON: A survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that more than a quarter of part-time workers want to work more hours.

27:39

Time-lapse. City workers/Aerial of city

 JIM STANFORD CENTRE FOR FUTURE WORK, AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE: So the types of very insecure day to day work that are being facilitated by these new web based platforms cannot be the basis for the prosperity of the of the whole community.

27:49

Jim Stanford

Are they a way to make a few bucks for people? Maybe.  But they’re not anything

28:03

Super:
JIM STANFORD
Centre for Future Work,
Australia Institute

like the sorts of permanent reliable income you need to have a healthy family and a healthy economy.

28:07

Stanford standing on street writing in diary

GEOFF THOMPSON: Canadian economist Jim Stanford is the founding director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, which is partly funded by trade unions.

JIM STANFORD: You know this idea that you’re not

28:14

Stanford

going to have a permanent job, you’re just going to kind of work from one short term gig to another, is often portrayed as a kind of amazing new development, but really there’s nothing new about it at all; that that model of work is centuries old in fact.  If you look back to the early days of capitalism, the way that early factories worked, for example, they didn’t offer people a 40 hour a week job in a factory. They would bring you in for a few hours and send you home or even better from the employer’s perspective, they would let you take the work home, you know. Say in a textile factory, do the work at home and then bring it back when you were done. 

28:28

Funny, that starts to sound a lot like some of these web based businesses, you know, around doing odd jobs. You’re supposedly working but, you know, on an occasional basis from your own home without any guarantee at all about your income.

29:05

Freelancer.com website

GEOFF THOMPSON: In an increasingly global competition for work, technology is overcoming geography. Another Australian company, Freelancer.com, has almost 20 million people around the world bidding for jobs that can be done over the internet.

29:21

Matt Barrie address conference. Super:
MATT BARRIE
CEO, Freelancer.com.

MATT BARRIE CEO, FREELANCER.COM (2012): Chances are, any job you can think of can be, whatever it may be – it could be done with a computer, which means anyone any time of day on the other side of the world potentially can do it for you for a fraction of the cost.

29:42

Stanford. Super:
JIM STANFORD
Centre for Future Work,
Australia Institute

JIM STANFORD:  If employers, or even the final customers, are able to you know reach out to other parts of the world where people are desperate and work for a fraction of what they do in Australia, it’s just another way of integrating Australia into this world labour market where, unfortunately, most people are poor and most people are much more desperate than they are in Australia.  So the shift towards more tradable services, that is services that can be performed in one country and delivered in another country, I think is going to accentuate the deterioration in the quality of work.

29:54

Jan Owen. Super:
JAN OWEN
CEO, Foundation for Young Australians

JAN OWEN CEO, FOUNDATION FOR YOUNG AUSTRALIANS: The challenge for 4.3 million young Australians is not the person sitting next to you in school, it’s actually the 750 million young people in the region. And that is actually the most challenging piece of the global story I think, is that how will we ensure that we’ve got a generation of young people who can really compete in that environment because we have literally no chance of staying this isolated island.

30:27

Jan Owen on street using tablet

Music

30:55

GEOFF THOMPSON: Jan Owen is the chief executive of the Foundation for Young Australians, which is lobbying for a complete overhaul of the way we teach our kids.

JAN OWEN: If we want to maintain

30:59

Jan Owen

our standard of living and sustain the way that we live here, Australia is right now not prepared and we’re not preparing young people for that global environment either.

31:12

Balmain Town Hall exterior

Music

31:23

Boy programming on computer

MAN:  Is this something you’ve been working on for a while?

BOY:  No, one week.

MAN:  That’s pretty good to get that done the first week.

31:27

MAN #2: So click on it and see what happens.

BOY:  I’m just a starter Dad.

MAN #2:  Yeah, but somehow you came up with this.

31:38

Town Hall interior. Kids programming

GEOFF THOMPSON: On Saturday afternoons in the Sydney suburb of Balmain kids come together, not to play sport, but to learn to code computers to help them win the jobs of the future.

31:44

Girl at computer

GIRL:  Let’s just get bananas.

MAN #3: OK, yes, I think you’re right actually.

31:57

This is called telling the computer what to do. Not letting it tell you what to do.

32:03

Robotic car

GEOFF THOMPSON: There’s even a robot car they are programming to move.

32:08

Volunteers working with kids

BEN LIQUETE, CODER DOJO: What it is, is a handful of volunteers that are mentoring children to learn how to code, to give them every sort of challenge, to be able to play and experiment and learn how to write programs themselves.

32:14

Ben Liquete

I believe that coding is the next layer of literacy.

32:28

Volunteers working with kids. Super:
BEN LIQUETE
Coder Dojo

Wherever you go you see people using software, you see parents giving their kids iPhones, I’ll go to an airport and I’ll see a parent trying to fob off their child by giving them an iPad.

32:32

Ben Liquete

We shouldn’t just be consuming it ad infinitum, but we should be able to write it as well.

32:43

Volunteer with boy

GEOFF THOMPSON: The parents here are learning just as much as their kids.

32:50

FATHER:  Learning that computers are things that they control, that are proactive over rather than just being passive recipients.

32:54

Father with child

You start to realise that you control the computer, you tell the computer what to do; the computer doesn’t tell you what to do

33:03

GEOFF THOMPSON:  Do you wish you were being told how to do this at school?

BOYS [in unison]: Yes. Definitely.

33:10

Boy at computer

GEOFF THOMPSON: Groups like Coder Dojo are also a reaction to parental concern that more skills like this are not being taught in Australian schools. 

33:20

Boy and mum

BOY:  No, they don’t really teach this sort of thing.

MUM: He’s teaching them.

GEOFF THOMPSON: At school?

MUM:  Yeah.

33:31

Kids working on computers in hall

I can see where this is going and what this is doing, and I can see the need for it. I definitely think this should be taught in schools.

33:38

Mum

This is what will be the future, writing these programs and applying them to their workplaces.

33:48

Boys at computers

JAN OWEN: What we don’t have in Australia is the proficiency or the numbers of young people who can make it, break it and build it.

33:57

Jan Owen. Super:
JAN OWEN
CEO, Foundation for Young Australians

Coding is a great skill. Very soon computers are going to be able to code to each other, so again it’s not actually the coding, it’s what’s the skill-set that you’re teaching underneath coding, and the skill-set that you’re teaching underneath coding is, you know, algorithms, it’s problem solving, it’s critical thinking.

34:05

Aerials. Suburbs

Music

34:22

Australian Science & Mathematics School exterior/interior

GEOFF THOMPSON: Schools in the future might look a bit more like the Australian Science & Mathematics School, which is leading a revolution in the way kids are taught. No bells ring here

34:28

Dog inside school

and students and teachers take turns bringing their dogs to school.

GLENYS THOMPSON DEPUTY PRINCIPAL, ASMS: So we don’t do bells and we don’t do uniforms and we don’t do surnames.  That’s because this is more like a real life experience.

34:41

Glenys Thompson. Super:
GLENYS THOMPSON
Deputy Principal, ASMS

You don’t have bells in your workplace. You don’t have closed off offices everywhere and you don’t have people calling you Mr or Miss. This is a real workplace. 

34:54

Teachers working with students

We want to be working with the kids, we don’t want them to think that we are the boss and by having structures like no walls, big classes, team work, no desks for teachers, we’re actually able to really help people and

35:03

Glenys Thompson

both the teachers and the students understand how we can do that in a way that is much more realistic.

35:22

ASMS classrooms

GEOFF THOMPSON: ASMS is a public school within the grounds of South Australia’s Flinders University. It’s for senior high school students with a passion for the so-called STEM subjects – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – necessary for 75 per cent of the fastest-growing occupations.

35:27

In most Australian high schools the study of STEM subjects has been declining for decades.

JON WILLIAMS PwC: So we need more people with those pure hard skills in science technology engineering and maths.

35:53

Jon Williams. Super:
JON WILLIAMS
PwC

The second revolution is in learning how to learn, learning how to build, learning how to design, because that can be applied throughout someone’s life to solve all sorts of problems as technology changes. 

36:06

Female students

FEMALE STUDENT:  I really like how it’s flowing down, I like that design.

JAN OWEN CEO, FOUNDATION FOR YOUNG AUSTRALIANS: STEM is going to be part of the future,  it’s not the only part of the future. Fifteen-year-olds in Australia today have got not the levels of digital proficiency, financial literacy, and then also ability

36:16

Jan Owen. Super:
JAN OWEN
CEO, Foundation for Young Australians

to communicate, present you know, what we call enterprising skills or transferable skills.  If they don’t have those skills, they’re going to find it really hard to navigate a very flexible career that has a whole heap of casual and other work going on in it.

36:34

ASMS classroom

GEOFF THOMPSON: ASMS tries to prepare students for the changing world of work with what it calls challenge-based learning.

36:51

Traditional subjects like English are not taught on their own. Instead they are mixed together to solve real-life problems. Every class is a collaboration.

GLENYS THOMPSON DEPUTY PRINCIPAL, ASMS: People are going to need to be fabulous communicators. They’re going to be, need to be really great team players.

37:04

Not only that, they need to have some disciplined knowledge, but they need to know how to learn because we don’t know what it is they’re going to need to learn. So

37:22

Glenys Thompson. Super:
GLENYS THOMPSON
Deputy Principal, ASMS

when we work with the students we work really closely not only on them gaining the academic knowledge, but also on gaining those dispositions and capabilities that are going to set them up to be successful in the future, because without that, the students won’t have choices.

37:32

Students on laptops

GEOFF THOMPSON:  Students have to invent a marketable product by the end of the semester.

JOSIAH HSI: So

37:48

Josiah. Super:
JOSIAH HSI

each group of three or four will choose an issue and they will fix it, or try to fix it using the facilities here.

37:54

Phoebe shows umbrella

PHOEBE BACHE: So what we’re aiming to do is have a GPS system

38:03

Super: PHOEBE BACHE

You can turn it on, and when the umbrella is 15 metres away it will alert you and it will tell you that your umbrella, which a lot of people leave umbrellas on buses and stuff and as soon as you walk out, you’re like ‘Where’s my umbrella?’, but the umbrella will tell you before you lose it.

38:06

3D printer

GEOFF THOMPSON: Using 3D printers, Chelsea, Phoebe and Josiah are designing an umbrella that won’t blow inside out, has an inbuilt torch and tells you when it’s lost.

38:18

Phoebe/Chelsea

GEOFF THOMPSON:  What other things can this umbrella do that other umbrellas can’t do?

CHELSEA ALBANESE:  I think the question we need to ask ourselves is what can’t it do?

38:32

Josiah shows umbrella design

JOSIAH HSI: There will be a flashlight that will go through here, and we plant to have a mirror that will shine the light out on to the path.

38:41

Phoebe

PHOEBE BACHE: With assignments like this, at other schools we probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to explore what we wanted to do, but here we definitely get to explore what we’re interested in, more than other schools. The ability to put your learning into real life situations is really beneficial.

38:49

Female students around laptop

STUDENT:  We could put a picture of our cone like a big picture ... or our logo.

39:07

GEOFF THOMPSON: In a quiet corner across the open-plan room, another group is trying to solve a different yet familiar problem – why

39:14

Ice cream cone prototype

ice cream is so messy to eat.

GEOFF THOMPSON: How did you make that?

39:22

Molly explains ice cream cone design

MOLLY VOSS: We 3D printed this. What we’ve done is we’ve incorporated a rim onto your normal ice-cream cone. So what it

39:25

Super: MOLLY VOSS

does is catches drips and it reduces the risk of getting sticky fingers when you’re eating ice cream.

39:32

Molly and students around laptop

GEOFF THOMPSON: The jobs these kids end up doing may not have been invented yet. We can’t future-proof their prospects, but rethinking what they need to learn may be a good place to start.

JAN OWEN CEO, FOUNDATION FOR YOUNG AUSTRALIANS: We could

39:40

Jan Owen. Super:
JAN OWEN
CEO, Foundation for Young Australians

start working with 12 year olds today, by the time they’ve done six years of high school and they’re 18, we could genuinely have changed their trajectory if we focussed on some of these education changes that need to happen, and we could genuinely set them up, and then therefore Australia up, for a very different future.

39:55

Students at product presentation pitch

Music

40:13

GEOFF THOMPSON: It’s two weeks later at ASMS and the students are presenting their products to potential investors.

40:20

Female student #1 at presentation

FEMALE STUDENT #1:  It’s biodegradable straws.

40:26

Female student #2 at presentation

FEMALE STUDENT #2: This is The One Card, it’s to solve the problem of having too many loyalty cards in your wallet or purse.

40:27

Chelsea shows umbrella at presentation

CHELSEA: We’ve designed it so that it can’t be blow inside out. We’ve got flaps here, so they allow for wind circulation so that it can’t be blown inside out ...

We’ve had guests and students come and look at us,

40:33

Super: CHELSEA ALBANESE

but hopefully an entrepreneur comes.

40:43

Drip-free cone video

Music

40:46

GEOFF THOMPSON: The drip-free ice cream cones

40:52

Molly demonstrates ice cream cone

now look ready to eat.

MOLLY VOSS: So you got the cone and we’ve attached a rim with lollies and you just eat the ice cream normally and it will drip down, land here and you just eat the rim as you go.

40:54

GEOFF THOMPSON: And have you had much interest?

MOLLY VOSS:  Yeah we’ve got quite a lot of people coming through, so it’s been exciting, yeah.

41:05

Music

41:10

Glenys Thompson. Super:
GLENYS THOMPSON
Deputy Principal, ASMS

GLENYS THOMPSON DEPUTY PRINCIPAL, ASMS: What we’re trying here to do is to really help our kids get the skills that they’re going to need in the future in terms of that resilience, that ability to really go out there and make opportunities for themselves.

41:12

Chelsea pitches umbrella to Scott Boocock

CHELSEA:  Have you ever had trouble with your umbrella blowing inside out?

SCOTT BOOCOCK:  I have.

CHELSEA:  Don’t you just hate it when you go inside and your umbrella is soaking wet?

SCOTT BOOCOCK:  Yes!

CHELSEA:  We know how you feel! Luckily, we have the product for you!

41:24

Our initial prototype is just right up here…

GEOFF THOMPSON: The umbrella team piques the interest of an entrepreneur.

41:36

Ice cream ‘team’ at stand

In the end, the ice-cream cones win the day with the umbrella kids close behind.

41:42

SCOTT BOOCOCK, ENTREPRENEUR: There are 73 stalls here today and

41:50

Scott. Super:
SCOTT BOOCOCK
Entrepreneur

I’ve done half of them so far and I believe that there’s at least two of them or three of them that are buyable right now, of which there’s two of them that  I would say are billion dollar businesses, if we could get it out there and sell them to the world.

41:55

Presentation stands/Students presenting products

Music

42:05

GEOFF THOMPSON: These young people are rethinking their future.

42:08

CHELSEA: Our umbrella is reasonably cheap…

GEOFF THOMPSON:  Many more Australians will need to do the same.

42:11

Music

PHOEBE BACHE: It’s been great, everyone loves it because the problem it fixes, everyone can relate to it.

42:16

Phoebe. Super:
PHOEBE BACHE

GEOFF THOMPSON:  And do you think that your future will be making your own opportunities in this way?

PHOEBE BACHE:  Yeah. I’ve never really considered that before, I’ve always thought of going down the traditional paths, but after doing this I’m like, maybe this is something like – I really enjoyed it and really enjoyed the marketing behind it as well, so this could definitely be like a future pathway for me.

42:25

42:49