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Patrick Kidd

Patrick Kidd

Patrick Kidd OBE OAM, CEO of Australia's Future Skills Organisation, leading national digital and AI workforce skills initiatives; former British and Australian Army officer and Invictus Games Sydney 2018 leader.

Oct 23, 2026

9:33
How do you see that and how is the FSO building on that? And I guess if I can prompt you, the SME coach system is an example of that, right? Yeah.
9:43
It's like the ultimate Wild West game at the moment, isn't it? Sort of like AI is out there.
9:48
Everybody's got a different view as to what we think and mean by AI and how it's then applied.
9:54
And the challenge that I think we all have is how to realize the opportunity and then translate that opportunity by building processes and capability that enables it to sort of come to life.
10:08
And when I think about this and the types of conversations I have, and I'll be really interested in just the feedback that you're getting, Rob, as you go around the country, because I think like when you look at AI, it's almost like you retreat to your respective position.
10:22
Either it's all bad and lots of risk and I don't want to go there, or actually you can see all of these amazing opportunities, but to translate those opportunities into sort of tangible value is, is in itself not straightforward, nor is it clear cut.
10:38
And so we sit in this sort of like middle ground, you know, being yanked around a little bit.
15:39
I guess one of the questions that many bookkeepers have right now probably many industries have right now, is, you know, when we put our lens across finance, business and technology as a whole, what are the biggest challenges that the FSO are seeing in the skills that employers are calling out for? And what should, you know, let's keep this because it is a bookkeeping podcast, what should bookkeeping practices be paying attention to now from the eyes of the FSO?
5:26
And in your review of broader skills gap analysis across different sectors, what are your insights which are coming through? And is the three-year undergrad degree short enough?
5:40
This work works great thanks for that question.
5:45
So I work in an organization called the future skills organization, we are a something called the jobs and skills Council the jobs and skills Council is there to.
5:54
There are 10 of us, different industry sectors, but our role fundamentally is to try to connect industry to the education training system, which is massive when you think about Australia's education training system.
6:04
13 million people a year are being educated in one form or another, either at school, in university, or through the VET system.
6:12
The VET system alone is like 5.5 million people every single year are touched by a four-wall part of our education training system.
6:21
It's highly complicated.

10 MINS LATER

15:54
Patrick, coming to you, on the work you have done, again, coming back to the state of AI skills, the report which you worked on, what's your observation across the skill sets across the SME sector? If you can pick up some sectors as an example to elaborate the skills gap and which sectors are more profound versus which sectors are a bit more closer.

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