Call for mobilisation of technological talent

Press, 11 February 1981, Page 18

Call for mobilisation of technological talent

PA Auckland Unless young people were encouraged back to technological' sciences Australia and New Zealand might miss the benefits of the-predicted huge growth in energy development, according to Professor Lance Endersbee, of Melbourne.. . Professor Endersbee, president of the Australian Institution of. Engineers, delivered the Newnham Memorial Lecture at the annual conference of the New Zealand Institution of Engineers at Auckland.

Professor Endersbee said that thw : two countries were -vulnerable to exploitation from techfl nolbgically advanced countries// ’ " “When tha Middles East .

was opened up for oil, the big oil companies moved in with 10,000 Korean workers and developed oil as if the Arabs did not exist,” he said. “We are in similar dan-

He said that it might already be “a little late” for young 'talent to be mobilised so that there was maximum local participain energy development. In natural gas and liquid fuel development, New Zealand and Australia were "on the verge of “some huge developments which could well ignite world imagination.”

Australia alone had about $30,000 million worth of. engineering projects timed to start over the next five years, but like New,Zealand faced a

shortage of engineers. Professor Endersbee said that engineers had to make clear to their Governments that local, talent should be used to the maximum. The Governments, in turn, should set up new managerial organisations to take maximum advantage of local, capability.

“They should not be patted on the head and told to go away while the big boys do it all,” he said.

A '•ecent report to the N.Z.I.E. noted that the loss of fee income involved in using overseas consultants was potentially valued at $2OO to $250 million for a list of big projects valued at $4OOO million a