Our initial response to the 2014 Budget impact on the surveying industry

The Federal budget has arrived and already caused a great deal of concern across the Australian community. Many are claiming that they will be worse off, and there is a great deal of commotion in the media.

As a business we are concerned for our industry, our employees and the professions supporting the Land development (Construction; Housing & Building) Industry, and the impact that the proposed changes will bring.

As a small business owner I understand that we all need to play a part in bringing our country back into the black, the results of not taking action to resolve high levels of debt now will ultimately hurt our country in the future.

Here are some of the comments from SSSI, our peak industry body, which shed some light on how our industry may benefit from some of the 2014 budget policies:

“The SSSI applauds the decision of the Federal Government to develop infrastructure in Australia. Members of SSSI play an essential role in planning, location and construction of infrastructure.

The SSSI also applauds the government’s decision to expand access to higher education in providing more courses, greater diversity and more skills for our workforce. Members of SSSI depend on graduates from higher education as employees to provide the mapping data that is the basis of all infrastructure development, support the development of the infrastructure, as well as ensure the integrity of the land titling system.

The SSSI expresses its serious concerns that this expansion in courses will divert students away from surveying and spatial science courses.  This will impact on the number of graduates in surveying and spatial sciences and threaten the ability of the profession to support future the infrastructure developments.

Current studies reveal that even without an expansion in infrastructure there will be insufficient graduates in surveying and spatial sciences this decade, thus putting at risk billions of dollars of infrastructure and housing development. The expansion of infrastructure will cause an even greater crisis in the availability of surveying and spatial science professionals.

The Institute urges the government to place special emphasis on recruitment of students into higher education courses in surveying and spatial sciences so that adequate graduates will be available at the height of the government’s infrastructure development later this decade”.

The shortage of surveying graduates in Queensland has certainly been noticed by our company and many others across the country. This has been an issue of concern for some time now and needs to be addressed to coincide with the development of new infrastructure.