Abstract. It is widely recognised that older workers are less likely to gain access to job‐related training than younger workers. This article reviews evidence on the extent of age‐based training differentials in Australia and the main barriers that inhibit older workers from accessing training. It is concluded that governments in Australia need to do far more to ensure that older workers are not denied access to training opportunities.

Crowding out" is a widely accepted claim in migration analysis, which posits that the preference of profitmaximising employers for irregular and minimally regulated migrants overregulated alternatives will undermine, if not condemn to failure, well-regulated temporary migration schemes. In this paper, we test the crowding out hypothesis by examining the experience with well-regulated seasonal migrant worker programs in the horticultural sectors of Australia and New Zealand. This experience, which in both countries has involved recruitment of workers from the Pacific Islands, has been divergent, despite the two programs being similar in design. Our findings suggest that the relative attractiveness of regulated and unregulated migrant labour sources depends on a range of factors, including the export orientation of the sector, the costs of collective action and regulation, differences in policy design and implementation, and external factors.Depending on industry and economy-wide characteristics, quality and reputational benefits for employers can offset the cost of regulation.

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Major concerns have been raised about the training reforms currently being implemented by the Australian government. This article draws on a survey of users of the national training system in Australia to outline the problems that have emerged and to recommend changes to existing implementation arrangements. In general terms, the ‘top‐down’, centrally driven bureaucratic processes are generating strong dissatisfaction among employers, the major clients of the training system. For the training reforms to work effectively in the workplace, business needs to have a much greater capacity to influence how resources are allocated as well as a greater say in how the overall frame work should work.