Not Very Clever!

When fitting out the boat I had carefully noted how Richard would fit a length of timber trim to the edge of the plywood panels.  He would machine the trim through the Thicknesser slightly thicker than the plywood and then plane it down using a small ‘Butt Plane’ after it was secured to the plywood.  When it came to the timber edging on the plywood bedhead I thought I’d be a little more clever and ensure the trim and the plywood were the same thickness.  That turned out to not be very clever.  The thickness of the plywood wasn’t uniform and I quickly realised I’d needed to rip the trim off the edge of the plywood before the glue set.

Now I had to repeat Richard’s method.  But I only have a very large hand plane, which isn’t suitable.  After searching online I realised a good English Butt plane would cost around $420 and I wasn’t prepared to pay that much.  In the end I managed to purchase a small Butt Plane for $88.  It was made in India.

Of course the blade wouldn’t cut butter and the plane was covered in some type of sticky preservative ,which mean the first job was a clean and sharpen.  I’ve been steadily planning the solid trim on the edge removing the surplus timber a few thou’s on each stroke. But I’m getting there.

The other not so clever move has been the State Govt.  My sister is a senior nurse and we were discussing the current hospital crisis.  There’s no COVID in the State but we still have a hospital crisis.  Ambulance Ramping is getting worse every year with most of the hospitals declaring a ‘code red’ at some time.  This means they are unable to take patients who must be diverted to another hospital.  Frequently that means the patient has to wait in the ambulance outside the hospital for hours whilst the staff endeavour to find a bed.  She informed me during her last shift her hospital had the only free ICU bed in all the city hospitals.  I hate to think what would happen if we had a COVID outbreak

This isn’t a new problem and the current government (Labor) criticised the previous government (Liberal) for the situation.  Labor has now been in power four years and the ambulance ramping problem has more than doubled. 

Recently the government announced several billions had been allocated in the next budget to build additional hospitals.  I suggested to my sister that should resolved the crisis in several years.  Apparently I’m wrong!  She told me the problem isn’t infrastructure; it’s a lack of staff.  There aren’t enough nurses! 

That seemed unusual as I’m aware my niece completed her nursing degree 12 months ago and couldn’t find employment.  This indicated to naïve me that there wasn’t a shortage of nurses.  It was explained to me.  Hospitals don’t want newly graduated nurses…… They want experienced nurses!  Essentially the hospitals don’t want the cost of on the job training for graduates.  They would rather attract a foreign ‘qualified’ nurse than train them.  My sister also explained a number of years ago governments move the cost of training nurses from the health to the education budget. 

We have the ludicrous situation where the universities are churning out new nurses that the health system doesn’t want. 

Thirty years ago government departments annually took on large numbers of apprentices.  However many of these industries were subsequently sold to the private sector who don’t want the training cost.  They would rather ‘poach’ qualified personnel from their competitors or lament the shortage in public and lobby the government to allow qualified foreign workers to be fast tracked into Australia.  Meanwhile we have a youth unemployment problem.

I have a solution to this problem.  Any organisation, company or government department who declares they have a skill workforce problem and wants to bring in a qualified foreign worker will pay a training levy to a government training fund.  The money in the fund will be used to train an Australian for that skillset.  The levy will be in place for the same duration that it takes to fully train the worker.  The worker will then enter the general workforce.

Organisations that declare a skill shortage and who decide to train personnel at their own expense will have the trainee bonded to the organisation after their training is completed for a period of 50% of their training time, After the bonded period the employee can seek alternative employment.  This approach means the organisation receives a return on their training investment and avoids a competitor ‘poaching’ a qualified worker thereby avoiding the  cost of training.