Australian PM pledges cash for construction apprentices ahead of election

By Peter Hobson and Alasdair Pal

CANBERRA (Reuters) -Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Friday announced cash incentives to attract apprentices to an overstretched construction industry, adding to billions of dollars in extra spending ahead of a general election due within months.

Construction apprentices will be offered a cash incentive of A$10,000 ($6,281) each, Albanese said in a speech on Friday seen as setting the scene for an election that must be held by May.

"Many apprentices have said they could earn more stacking shelves at the supermarket - and too many leave training, because they can’t afford to stay," he said in an address to the National Press Club in the capital Canberra.

"Our government wants to encourage more Australians to learn a trade and stay in construction."

The incentives will cost around A$627 million over four years, with the aim of hitting the government's target of building 1.2 million homes in the next five years.

Decades of booming demand and constricted supply have made Australia's housing market among the most unaffordable in the world, with successive governments failing to hit house building targets.

Housing is the largest contributor to a rising cost of living in Australia, that is expected to be one of the major campaigning issues for parties in the upcoming election.

Albanese's centre-left Labor Party has a majority in the lower house of parliament, but is narrowly trailing the conservative opposition coalition in opinion polls released this week, meaning it may be reliant on minor parties like the Greens to form a government if it emerges as the largest party in this year's election but fails to secure another majority.

Albanese's apprentice incentive announcement takes government pledges made in recent months past A$15 billion.

They include A$7.2 billion to upgrade a major highway in the state of Queensland, A$3 billion for upgrades to the country's broadband network and A$2 billion to support the aluminium industry.

($1 = 1.5921 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Peter Hobson in Canberra and Alasdair Pal in Sydney; Editing by Michael Perry)