中文Here’s a hard truth about the printing industry: everyone complains about the skills shortage, but comparatively few businesses do anything structured about it. That gap is exactly why a ten-minute survey currently open in Australia matters more than it sounds.
The Manufacturing Industry Skills Alliance (MISA) has launched a national survey as part of its review of the ICP Printing and Graphic Arts Training Package – the document that quietly governs how every Australian print apprentice and trainee is trained. And Kellie Northwood, CEO of the Visual Media Association (VMA), is making a direct, personal plea for the industry to show up and be counted before the survey closes on Friday 13 November at 5pm AEDT.
Let’s be clear about what’s actually at stake, because “training package review” sounds like bureaucracy having lunch with itself. The ICP Training Package defines the competencies, qualifications and skill standards for the entire print, packaging and graphic arts workforce pipeline. Get it right, and the next generation of press operators, prepress technicians, finishers and production managers arrives with skills that match the modern automated, digital-first plant. Get it wrong, and the industry keeps graduating people for a version of print that stopped existing years ago – while employers keep posting jobs nobody’s qualified to fill.
Northwood’s argument is refreshingly blunt about who’s responsible. As the peak body representing Australia’s print and visual media industries, the VMA has done its institutional homework: it has appointed industry representatives to both the MISA Standing Committee and the Strategic Industry Taskforce, and Northwood herself sits on the MISA Board. But representation, she insists, isn’t enough.
“We have a clear responsibility to ensure the needs of our employers and workforce are understood and reflected in the national skills and training agenda,” she said. “That said, I also need our industry to harness these opportunities and share their insights through survey opportunities, such as the MISA industry survey.”
The second part of her message carries the real weight: “We cannot expect government and training bodies to fully understand the challenges facing print businesses unless we contribute directly to the discussion.”
She’s right, and the context makes her case stronger. The VMA has recently been in direct conversation with Minister Giles, including a commitment to work with MISA on one of the industry’s most persistent practical grievances: getting print trades re-listed on the Australian Apprenticeships Priority List, the mechanism that determines the financial support apprentices actually receive. Without that listing, recruiting young people into print trades gets harder while competing industries offer richer incentives.
There’s fresh ammunition for the case, too. The VMA’s own Workforce Shortages survey has just closed, and Northwood describes the findings as “compelling” – data that will be presented to MISA in a formal briefing on 9 November. The picture emerging across both surveys is of an industry where demand for skilled people is rising even as the traditional training pipeline thins, a combination that ends one way if nothing changes: work moves offshore or to whatever industry can staff up.
What makes this survey different from the usual consultation-theatre is timing and leverage. MISA is reviewing the training package now. Decisions made in this cycle will shape what apprentices learn for years. Input from the production floor, prepress and finishing professionals, managers and business leaders – Northwood names them all – is what determines whether the refreshed package reflects the real toolkit of a 2027 print plant: digital workflows, automation, data-driven production, and yes, the human judgment that all of it still depends on.
The ask is deliberately small. Ten to twelve minutes. Comments close Friday 13 November at 5pm AEDT. And for VMA members or anyone in the industry who wants to add detail beyond the survey form, Northwood has offered something unusual – her direct contact line, with a promise to carry feedback into the upcoming discussions personally.
Industries get the workforce systems they tolerate. Australian print has spent years tolerating a skills pipeline built for a previous era, and it shows in every unfilled vacancy. This is the rare moment when fixing it costs ten minutes. The only question is whether enough businesses take them.
Consider what’s actually changed since the ICP package was last meaningfully refreshed. Wide-format has become a production discipline of its own. Digital label and packaging presses have rewritten the operator skill set. Automation and workflow software have collapsed job roles that used to be separate departments. Data now drives scheduling the way craft knowledge once did. Every one of those shifts needs to be visible in the competencies the training package defines – or Australia will keep certifying apprentices for jobs that no longer exist while employers scramble for skills the system never taught.
Source: Print21 – “Northwood calls on industry to support MISA Skills survey” (October 30, 2026).
