Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Ballarat is saying, ‘And Ballarat.’ There were 190 school based apprentices in Ballarat this year. When Labor was last in office there were none. These sorts of initiatives are there to engage with business, to listen to their demands, to understand the way in which the training system needs to be geared so that training is delivered when, how and in the way that business wants and to encourage more businesses to take on training opportunities. Each of those 39 casual part-time people, if in fact they have lost their work—because they are part of a labour hire firm that may not be the case—is probably finding more work right now. I hope that they engage a company that wants to take on training and will give them an opportunity to learn, if they are ambitious to do it.

It is worth saying for the record that, under the government’s program, there is no limit to the number of apprentices who can be employed around Australia. The funding for incentives for apprenticeships is unlimited and the government will support as many apprentices as employers are able to put on, particularly in the trades. In the last financial year, over $539.2 million has been paid to employers under our apprenticeships support scheme.

We found when talking to businesses who were unable to attract anybody in the local community to take on training or who were unable to attract sufficient skilled Australian candidates for the jobs—as MaxiTRANS found when they had an urgent need for experienced welders, despite rounds of advertising and open days at the factory—that they made full use of our skilled migration program. The member for Ballarat’s contribution, short as it was, was also lacking in the detail that I think brings the whole story to the front of this discussion. It is important to note, yet again—

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