Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Obviously it is somebody I do not even recognise; he has made such a little contribution. Thank you very much for mentioning the technical colleges, because so far not even 100 extra people have been enrolled in them. The government promised that we would have 25 of them. So far they have managed to get four open and at the most only 100 extra people. The Australian Industry Group says we need 100,000 extra trained tradespeople. We had the Australian Industry Group last night coming out saying how incredibly disappointed it was with last night’s budget.

The Treasurer might come in here and arrogantly say: ‘I didn’t get anything wrong. I am absolutely perfect. I can smirk my way through anything.’ One thing he has got terribly wrong when it comes to the future of the Australian economy is the need to invest in skills. The Treasurer this morning on the radio tried to say the reason we have such a terrible skills shortage is that we do not have a pool of unemployed people that are underutilised. That just shows how incredibly out of touch he is.

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