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

Go to the Illawarra. That would be one place. Go to Ballarat, go to Western Sydney, go to the Northern Rivers. There are so many places around Australia where there are, in particular, young people desperate to work who cannot find work. In fact, there are 500,000 officially unemployed people. Add to that the 600,000 people who are working part time who actually want to do some more work. Add to them the 1.2 million jobless Australians who want to work but who do not show up in the monthly unemployment figures. That is 2.3 million Australians who want to work or who want more work. But the Treasurer, of course, just wipes them off. Those unemployed people, those people who want more work, are not relevant to him. These people want to work. What they need is assistance to get the training that they need to get the jobs that are out there.

The skills crisis in this country is the direct result of this Treasurer’s poor economic management. There is nobody else to blame but this Treasurer. He knows that this country is the only developed country in the world that has actually cut public funding to universities and TAFE. No wonder we have seen since this Treasurer has been in charge 300,000 young Australians turned away from TAFE. He does not think he got that wrong. No doubt he blames somebody else for that. There have been 300,000 young Australians turned away from TAFE. This is what the Treasurer has got wrong. There has been no investment in skills—and the Treasurer has now come back into the chamber—and the government’s only answer to the skills crisis is to bring in more skilled migrants from overseas. We have seen 270,000 extra migrants brought in from overseas since this government has been in power. At the same time it has turned away 300,000 Australians from TAFE. There was no new money in this budget for TAFE. There was a reduction in a whole lot of different programs. The Treasurer did not even bother to highlight it in his reply today as the major capacity constraint identified by the Reserve Bank. It has been one of the big criticisms that the government has received from the Australian Industry Group.

The Treasurer wanted us to highlight some of the policies that we have put forward. I am sure he does not really want to hear about them because, if he were prepared to take any notice, he might have implemented some of them in last night’s budget. One of the major problems with apprenticeships in this country is that 40 per cent of young people do not complete their apprenticeships. Labor has proposed a very straightforward policy whereby a trade completion bonus would be paid to young people to encourage them to complete.

We have also proposed skills accounts for every traditional trade apprentice, but the Treasurer is not really interested in new policies in this area. He said he was—he made a big song and dance about it in his reply—but he is now studiously avoiding taking any notice of the changes that Labor has proposed. Labor has proposed a skills account for every traditional trade apprentice, which will make sure that apprentices do not face any TAFE fees. We do not want anything getting in the way of young people undertaking a traditional trade apprenticeship. We want to encourage them to do so. We have also proposed that 4,000 extra school based apprenticeships be funded. We have said that the government should have a trade TAFE program in schools. How many more initiatives would the Treasurer like Labor to put forward?

There is one proposal that I am glad to say the government did pick up last night, and it did not cost very much money. Labor and the Australian Industry Group have put forward a proposal to extend employer incentives to higher level technical skills at the diploma and advanced diploma levels. I am glad that the Treasurer picked up that initiative. It is not very much money, but it is very important. Unfortunately, there are many other initiatives that Labor has put forward that the Treasurer has not picked up. We will continue to do the hard policy work and we hope that, one day, the Treasurer might take some notice. (Time expired)

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