Rod Camm has been appointed as CEO of MTA Queensland, replacing Dr Brett Dale who has taken the CEO role at AMA Queensland (Australian Medical Association).

Mr Camm comes to the role with vast experience in organisational leadership. He has led government agencies, statutory bodies, government-owned companies, member-based organisations and has worked closely with international bodies such as the OECD and UNESCO across areas of education, training, and industry engagement including in such areas as focusing on how skills development can be better recognised across international boundaries.

Most recently he was involved with establishing of the National Skills Commission – an organisation tasked with providing intelligence to the Australian government on future education, skills and jobs, as well as driving improvements across the skills system and Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector.

Mr Camm said that bringing this broad range of experience in delivering training, business and engagement solutions and channelling it into the automotive industry was an exciting opportunity and a tremendous challenge. There are few industries, he said, that will be affected more by the speed of technological developments and face such tremendous disruption, and MTA Queensland’s role would be essential to the industry’s development.

“The opportunity to work in an industry that is genuinely and fundamentally changing is remarkable,” he said. “There is a lot of talk about technology disruption and digital disruption, but it is really happening in this industry and it is going to change all of us and everything we do.

“Any industry organisation looking to the future cannot confront or hold back technological change. We must help members embrace it and help them exploit it to their advantage, and so we will continue to be a key player. Brett has built a tremendous legacy for the industry and I want to build on that.”

Assisting businesses to develop the skills and knowledge to adapt to the industry’s evolution will be an important part of what MTA Queensland will deliver, and there will, said Mr Camm, be a sustained focus on developing training programs that reflect future skills requirements; on engagement that will enable businesses to embrace and prosper from technological advances; on committing to seeking out and helping new ideas and concepts get off the ground and encouraging the next generation of industry leaders to get a foothold in the industry; and of continuing with investments of time and resources into researching and developing technology via partnerships with other organisations, industry and government.

“We must try and help start-ups in this industry and assist them to connect across industry and government,” he said. “That is where the action is and doing so also helps us inform what we do in the training room and enables us to give people the skills to be adaptable.”

The speed of the industry’s technological development demands that training programs adapt along with it, and delivering automotive training relevant to the new environment will lead to significant changes in that sector, said Mr Camm.

Most notable amongst these training ideas is the concept of ‘micro-credentials’ – new skills delivered via short but rigorous courses that enable technicians to gain expertise in a targeted area.
The MTA Institute already delivers a number of these courses – including those on battery electric and hybrid electric vehicle inspection and servicing – but they will play a much bigger role in the training environment in years to come.

“The real challenge is that technology is designed and deployed very quickly, and that is why there is talk around the concept of micro-credentials,” said Mr Camm. “All of the major technology firms and all of the car manufacturers develop their own training products because it is based on today’s technology. That is the future of the training system and we must be in that space.”

The need to embrace new technology has, he added, never been clearer than in the past year as the nation tackled the COVID crisis, and the opportunities that digital technology has revealed – grim though the circumstances have been that illuminated their potential – should be embraced, even as the economy emerges from the effects of the pandemic.

“It has been an awfully difficult time,but what has happened? Things have moved online,” said Mr Camm. “The idea of digital disruption and the notion of transacting online has been around a long time but suddenly, this year, the industry had no choice but to accept it. And they have been fantastic at it. So how do we now use technology that has come to the fore in this crisis to keep our own businesses more efficient? My biggest message to industry would be ‘Don’t waste the crisis’.”

For MTA Queensland’s members, Mr Camm said his aim was to deliver on this ‘don’t waste the crisis’ message by offering even greater engagement and support as the situation eases and a sense of normality returns, and he encourages members to engage with MTA Queensland as it reaches out to offer its support as the industry continues its relentless technological progress.

“MTA Queensland has probably never been more effective at engaging with members,” he said. “We have reached out to them constantly, have given daily updates on the COVID situation, and they loved it. We must not lose that intimacy now we are coming out of the crisis.

“We want members to be involved, and I am looking forward to meeting them. They are at the coalface. They are the ones who can give us the information about what is impacting them, and we intend to totally revitalise our engagement strategy with them.

“We are going to be out there talking to them both virtually – because that is a technology that we know works! – and face to face. The opportunities are tremendous. It is an exciting time and I am looking forward to working with the industry, the board, with government and our members.”

Source: Motor Trader e-Magazine (December 2020/January 2021)

16 December 2020