Conference to focus on Indigenous engagement with electrical trades

This year’s EE-Oz Training Standards conference will focus on groundbreaking projects and initiatives involving Indigenous engagement in the electrical trades. The event will take place over 30 and 31 October in Alice Springs.

Keynote speakers include: Bob Taylor from EE-Oz; Shane Eels from Horizon Power; Josh Toomey, winner of the National NAIDOC Apprentice of the Year award; and Peter Taylor, CEO of Centre for Appropriate Technology.

Taylor and Eels will outline a project between EE-Oz and Horizon Power to pilot a new qualification, a Certificate III Remote Community Utilities Worker, which addresses the problems with power reliability in remote WA communities.

The qualification will train a generation of Indigenous apprentices from remote communities to work in generation and distribution so they can service their communities. The apprentices will become full-time Horizon employees.

NAIDOC Apprentice of the Year Josh Toomey will present a seminar entitled ‘Getting Right for the Fight’, in which he talks about preparing to sit the Ausgrid apprenticeship test from the perspective of a young Indigenous man.

Peter Taylor will talk about the Bushlight Project, which helps Indigenous communities access energy services, manage them sustainably and use them to contribute to their long-term livelihood. Taylor will explain how solar renewable projects have helped remote communities develop class-leading renewable energy examples that are now lighting the way forward for remote communities across the globe.