Beyond the Broncos Youth Employment Project

When Christian Dermody finished school in Caboolture, he reckoned his options were pretty narrow. Country town, no real industry contacts, and a vague idea that he wanted to work with his hands. Eighteen months later, he's a first-year boilermaker on the tools at Practical Engineering in Brisbane, smashing his apprenticeship goals, and being asked to come back and mentor the next intake of kids walking the same road he just walked. That's not luck. That's what happens when a footy club, a group training organisation and a switched-on young bloke all pull in the same direction.

The vehicle that got Christian there is the Beyond the Broncos Indigenous Youth Employment Program — and All Trades Queensland has been proud to partner with the Brisbane Broncos to help make it work on the ground. We're not just assisting in building Queensland's construction and engineering workforce. We're helping build futures for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Queenslanders who deserve every shot at a trade that the next bloke gets.

What Beyond the Broncos actually does

Beyond the Broncos supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in Years 10 to 12 across Brisbane South, Ipswich, Redlands, Logan, Beenleigh, the Gold Coast and Northern NSW. It's not a feel-good photo op. It's a serious, structured program that walks alongside students through the back end of high school and into their first 26 weeks of work — the stretch where most young apprentices either find their feet or fall out of the system entirely.

Students get classroom support, career planning, work-readiness coaching, and personal mentoring from ambassadors who genuinely know what it's like to graft for a living — names like Justin Hodges, Scott Prince, Bo de la Cruz and Jharal Yow Yeh. These aren't blokes reading from a script. They're former players who've been through the grinder, made mistakes, learned lessons, and are now passing the playbook on.

The program has grown from a handful of schools to 44 schools and roughly 1,300 student participants. That's a serious footprint, and the outcomes — measured in school completion rates, apprenticeship sign-ups, and full-time job placements — are turning heads across the sector. For broader context on how Indigenous youth employment fits into the national skilling agenda, the Australian Apprenticeships framework outlines the support payments, mentoring entitlements and incentive structures that underpin programs like this one.

Christian's story: from Caboolture to the workshop floor

Christian heard about Beyond the Broncos through his school. He's the first to admit he didn't have a fixed plan when he signed up. "My initial reaction was, I'd just take whatever job came up," he says. "But when the process started with All Trades, they asked me questions to be sure I'd be fitted into the right job — what I was actually looking for. They did everything in their power to contact everyone in that trade, and it ended up awesome, because they didn't stop until I got exactly the job I was after."

That's the difference between a job placement and a career match. Christian wanted boilermaking. Not welding-adjacent, not "something in a workshop" — boilermaking. ATQ kept knocking on doors until Practical Engineering opened theirs. Ten weeks into the placement, his host employer's Operations Manager Jai Rice couldn't be happier:

"Christian's skills and confidence have increased dramatically over the last 10 weeks, but it's really down to his attitude. He's been showing initiative, getting on top of things, asking the right questions. He's really getting on with everyone in the workshop and in the office. It's just been fantastic to have him on board."

Christian himself credits the program for the soft skills as much as the trade pathway: "The program has helped me so much. They've been super supportive, but they also teach you heaps to help you grow. I learnt how to make industry contacts I can call on later, how to put a proper resume together, and how to actually carry yourself in a job interview."

Why mentoring matters more than people realise

Anyone who's done a trade knows the first six months are brutal. New worksite, new lingo, older blokes testing you, early starts, and the constant nagging feeling you're about to cock something up in front of everyone. For a kid who's moved away from a rural town, away from family, into a city — that pressure goes up another notch.

This is where the Broncos program earns its money. Each apprentice gets a personal mentor for the first 26 weeks. That mentor checks in, helps sort issues before they become reasons to walk off the job, and connects the apprentice into a wider community of people who've done what they're doing.

At ATQ, our Project Coordinator and Mentor Wayne Smith has been part of the Broncos partnership since 2003 — back when it started with the under-20s academy players and well before the Youth Employment Program took its current shape.

"The benefit of our relationship is that we know how the program works," Wayne explains. "We can speak to people in their program and give them a clear idea of what they need to work towards to be eligible for All Trades employment. Christian has the right qualities we look for in an apprentice, and the feedback we're getting from his host employer is very good. He's headed in the right direction. Over the course of the apprenticeship, we don't just give them support to learn trade skills — we give them support for life skills as well."

Life skills. That's the bit that gets glossed over in apprenticeship brochures. Budgeting your first apprentice wage. Knowing when to speak up on a worksite and when to keep your head down. Showing up on time after a rough night. Calling in properly when you're crook. None of that comes naturally to a 16-year-old, and none of it gets taught in TAFE.

The role of a group training organisation

For young people coming through programs like Beyond the Broncos, the group training model is a quiet powerhouse. ATQ employs the apprentice directly and places them with a host employer — meaning if a placement isn't the right fit, or the host's workload changes, the apprentice doesn't fall off a cliff. We rotate them, we support them, and we keep them moving towards qualification.

If you're a young Queenslander weighing up your options, it's worth having a proper look at the breadth of trades available through the apprenticeship pathway. Most school leavers default to thinking "carpenter or sparky" because that's what they've seen on a worksite. The reality is a lot wider — fabrication, fitting and turning, diesel fitting, electrical instrumentation, refrigeration, civil construction. You can scope out apprenticeships across Queensland to see what's actually being offered right now, by region and trade.

For Indigenous students specifically, the Queensland Government's training and skills department publishes a range of support measures — additional mentoring funding, tutorial assistance, and culturally appropriate pathways — that work alongside programs like Beyond the Broncos to even up the playing field.

Hosts: why this is good business, not charity

One of the biggest misconceptions about Indigenous employment programs is that they're a feel-good exercise for the host company. Jai Rice at Practical Engineering would tell you that's rubbish. Christian is earning his keep. He's productive, he's growing, and he's the kind of apprentice who'll still be there in four years' time when the business needs a qualified boilermaker.

The reality across Queensland's trades sector is brutal: we are short of skilled tradespeople, and the gap is widening every year. Mining, civil, fabrication, electrical — every sector is screaming out for apprentices who will actually stick. Hosts who partner with structured programs end up with retention rates well above the industry average, because the wraparound support means the apprentice gets through the hard yards.

It's the same logic that drives the demand for experienced labour on Queensland's biggest projects. Whether it's day-rate and labour hire work on civil sites in the south-east, or mining and FIFO roles out in the Bowen Basin, the operators who plan their workforce properly — apprentices, tradespeople, leading hands all coming through a pipeline — outperform the ones who rely on poaching mates of mates off Facebook.

What success actually looks like

Christian is now nearing the end of his initial 26-week mentoring window. He's been asked to come back and present to the next intake — to stand up in front of a group of Year 11 and 12 students and tell them what the journey is really like. That's a massive endorsement of where he's at, and it's the kind of full-circle outcome the program is built to produce.

Think about that for a second. A kid from a rural town, who didn't really know what he wanted to do two years ago, is now standing in front of younger Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students as a credible role model in a skilled trade. That's the multiplier effect. One success creates the next ten.

Where to from here

ATQ will keep backing Beyond the Broncos with everything we've got. We'll keep matching the right young people with the right host employers, keep mentoring through the rough patches, and keep adding qualified Indigenous tradespeople to Queensland's workforce. The relationship with the Broncos sits at the heart of that mission, and as the program scales — more schools, more students, more regions — our job is to scale alongside it.

If you're a student, parent, teacher or potential host employer reading this and wondering how to get involved, the door is open. Beyond the Broncos can be reached through the Brisbane Broncos' community office, and from our side, our coordinators can walk any host or apprentice through what the next step looks like. You can also have a browse of current job listings to get a sense of what's moving in the Queensland market right now.

Trades change lives. They built this state and they'll keep building it. Programs like Beyond the Broncos make sure that opportunity actually reaches every postcode, every community, and every kid with the grit to give it a crack — same as Christian did.