A young WA carpenter who has competed on the world stage and addressed Parliament is doing more for apprentice recruitment than most industry campaigns. He just does not see it that way.
Lewis Italiano had never been on a plane before WorldSkills.
That changed when his TAFE lecturer put his name forward for a regional cabinet making competition in Western Australia. He won gold. He went to nationals in Melbourne. He won gold again. Then he trained for nearly a year, flew to Lyon, France, and competed at the WorldSkills International competition in front of 250,000 visitors from 60 countries.
He also went to Parliament House and talked to politicians about apprenticeships. He speaks at high schools on his days off. In 2025, Master Builders named him WA Apprentice of the Year.
He is partway through his second trade.
He is in his early twenties.
Where It Started
Lewis grew up on a family dairy farm, which gave him something that no training program can manufacture: a working understanding of hard work and the sense of urgency that comes with it.
That foundation found a direction in Year 11 woodwork classes. Something clicked. The combination of working with his hands and making something that others could see and use hooked him quickly. After Year 12, he started a cabinet making apprenticeship.
From there, the path Lewis describes sounds straightforward. In reality, it required consistent discipline that most people his age, in any field, would find difficult to sustain.
Training on weekends. Practice projects before and after work. Research into whether the competition could take him further. A decision to lock in and go all in, not because someone told him to, but because he genuinely wanted to see how far he could take it.
Once I realised I could represent my country, I just locked in from there. I got really excited about it. I was spending my weekends training and doing practice projects after work and before work even.
WorldSkills: The Olympics the Industry Barely Knows
WorldSkills is a series of competitions running from regional through to international level across more than 60 skill categories. Cabinet making sits alongside hairdressing, automotive, cooking and dozens of other trades. The international event operates at a scale that most Australians would not expect: 1,600 competitors, 60 countries, a venue of 144,000 square metres, and a quarter of a million visitors.
Australia competes, but Lewis is honest about where the country sits in the global picture.
The countries that take WorldSkills seriously invest heavily in it. Training squads, practice competitions, expert coaching. Lewis was selected into a training squad six months before the international event and spent that time doing mock competitions and working with specialists around Australia. WorldSkills China invited him over for a practice competition before Lyon.
He earned a Medallion of Excellence at the international competition, the award given to competitors who score above the threshold for a medal but do not finish on the podium. At that level, in that field, it is a significant result.
His view on Australia’s position is measured, not bitter.
Australia might be a little bit on the back foot. But Australia is going to get there and WorldSkills is going to be a big thing one day. I am privileged to be a part of it now and help uplift that recognition.
Apprentice Pay: Short-Term Cost, Long-Term Gain
The conversation about apprentice wages is one the industry keeps having without getting much further. Lewis does not dodge it.
When he started his cabinet making apprenticeship, he was earning around $350 a week. A significant portion of that went on fuel to get to and from work. He felt the pressure. He is not pretending otherwise.
But his framing of that experience is worth paying attention to, because it is the same framing that helps him talk to young people considering the trades today. Someone heading to university is paying for their education and may not land a job in their field. Someone doing a trade is getting paid to learn a skill that Australia needs and will continue to need. The calculus looks different when you run those numbers.
That does not mean the current pay rates are adequate. Lewis is not arguing they are. But his own experience suggests that mindset plays a role in whether someone pushes through the early years or walks away.
He also makes a point that rarely surfaces in these conversations: trades are not going to be replaced by AI. He told a group of high school students recently that he would be impressed if he saw a robot climb onto a roof with a nail gun. They laughed. He meant it.
The Real Recruitment Problem Is in the Lounge Room
Lewis does school talks on his own time, not as part of any formal program. He turns up, shares what his apprenticeship has actually looked like, describes the competitions, the travel, the possibilities, and then answers questions.
What he has noticed is that the audience that needs convincing is not always the students. It is the parents.
Parents have come from an upbringing where if you do not go to university, you are not going to be successful. Changing that stigma is pretty important. It all starts in high school, with kids who do not exactly know what they want to do.
This is not a new observation, but Lewis brings a particular credibility to it. He is not an industry spokesperson or a policy advocate. He is a young man who chose the trades over university, won a gold medal at nationals, represented Australia internationally, addressed Parliament, and is now building toward his second trade and potentially his own business.
That story, told plainly and without fanfare, lands differently than any campaign or brochure.
Standards, Not Just Skills
One thread that runs through everything Lewis describes is an orientation toward quality. He talks about caring more about the product than the payment. About taking pride in the work rather than just clearing the job. About his team choosing not to be the fastest on site but being ones who do it right.
In a sector where the word quality is used as freely as good morning, Lewis means something specific by it. He is talking about craft. About making something that can be inspected, presented, and left standing as a reflection of the person who built it.
This is also why the WorldSkills format matters to him beyond the competition itself. The preparation required to compete at an international level demands a standard of finish and a level of precision that simply doing the job every day does not always develop. It pushes tradespeople to find out what they are actually capable of.
What Comes Next
Lewis is finishing his carpentry apprenticeship, which will give him a dual trade. He talks about the possibility of a builder’s licence. He wants to build his own home as a project in the next year or so. He is staying involved in mentoring and ambassador work because he thinks it matters, not because anyone has asked him to make a career of it.
He has also, quietly and without making much of it, become someone that the industry’s most senior figures are paying attention to. He has been inside Parliament House. He has been on international podiums. He has sat down with politicians and explained why apprenticeships matter.
None of that shows up in the standard picture of what an apprentice looks like.
That might be the most important thing about Lewis Italiano. He is not a different category of person. He is a young man from a dairy farm who found something he loved, decided to take it seriously, and kept going. The question the industry should be asking is not where to find more people like him, but what conditions allow the ones who are already there to find out what they are capable of.
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