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

I welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate. The member for Jagajaga’s contribution was a curious grab bag. I noticed that less than half of the entire Labor caucus showed up and people left—in fact, so did the public gallery. In the member for Jagajaga’s efforts to secure her own deputy leadership, today is an historic occasion. She signed her letter to the Speaker today as ‘Jennifer Macklin’. I think there could be a push on. Maybe instead of losing her deputy leadership she is in fact starting to gain the momentum to try and roll ‘big Kim’, the member for Brand. We will have to wait and see.

Going to the substantial nature of this debate, there is no doubt in my mind that this is a matter of public importance. It is absolutely important that the public is fully aware of the set of circumstances Australia is in today—and they can make a set of judgments. To compare and contrast the efforts of the previous Labor government and this government alone is a very worthy way of putting the case for why this government is quite the opposite of what the member for Jagajaga has put forward in her rant to this chamber today. The Labor Party used training to hide unemployment. I remember very clearly that, leading up to the 1996 election, there was a great community debate about the amount of money used on the Working Nation program, which was a training program designed to grab the long-term unemployed—unemployment was 11.1 per cent, while today it is 4.8 per cent; that is a great compare and contrast. There were billions of dollars in funding for Working Nation. No jobs were created, but people were slipped into a training program and not counted as unemployed. A way to hide unemployment was to train people; that was the way Labor saw training.

Looking at apprenticeship completions, it is interesting to note that at the end of 1995 just 31,500 people completed an apprenticeship. How many completed an apprenticeship at the end of 2005? It was 138,700. So there were 31,500 completions in 1995 and 138,700 completions at the end of 2005. That is because this government has focused on training—not to hide people on welfare but because we believe people should have the opportunity to gain skills that are relevant to the way our economy works. We have generated an enormous number of apprenticeships. People are not only starting apprenticeships in record numbers today, but also completing apprenticeships in record numbers.

The member for Jagajaga spoke about an ‘apparent’ cut in investment in education and training in the budget of August 1996. It is important to remind people that there was a very good reason why there would have been a review of expenditure in that budget. In fact, there were 96 billion reasons—and every one of them was an Australian dollar. There was a $96 billion black hole. The Australian Labor Party, announcing the 1995 budget at this very dispatch box, said there was going to be a surplus of more than $10 billion. When we came to office we found that they were not $10 billion up but $96 billion down. There was $96 billion of debt, which had an enormous impact on Australians who were borrowing money for their homes, for other investments and, indeed, for everyday expenditure. People were borrowing at a higher rate simply because the Australian government was in the borrowing market, owing $96 billion to the world. The government took the hard decisions in August 1996 and made the changes necessary to put us in a position where we are now debt free. In fact, we are now able to take the surpluses generated from the taxes paid by Australians and, using good economic management, put money aside in the Future Fund—something the Labor Party never imagined.

What I also find amazing about the contribution by the member for Jagajaga today is that, in the previous parliament of 2001 to 2004, I think she asked one or two questions on skills. Yet today she tells me this is a crisis that has been building since 1999. It is a crisis that has not garnered any effort from the member for Jagajaga except for occasionally. Over the last six or seven weeks we in my office have been remarking about how quiet she has been—in fact, she has disappeared from the agenda. Maybe the winter recess was good to her; I was on the road talking with real Australians about real issues.

I also know that the member for Jagajaga did nothing when it came to the 2003 national training agreement that this government attempted to negotiate with the states in a cooperative federalism model. All the states walked out on that to try and create a political pressure point at the expense of people in training. They walked away and denied Australians the extra growth funds we were offering through that agreement. I find all of that lack of attention, lack of credibility and lack of record of engagement on this issue a point that needs to be put on the record. In fact, I do not believe it was until the federal election campaign of 2004 that we heard from her. During that campaign the Prime Minister said that a raft of new measures and expenditure would be announced in the 2005 budget—which were delivered on time and in full; in fact, we delivered more than we promised in the 2004 election campaign. But we do not believe we heard anything from the member for Jagajaga until we started these sorts of initiatives that the government has put in place through over $1 billion of extra expenditure.

If you want do a compare and contrast, the Australian Labor Party’s expenditure until 1996 was $1.07 billion; this government this year expended $2½ billion. On top of that there is additional money through the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations and a number of other departments for training, health and other areas. There has never been a government like this as far as investing in training is concerned. As an Australian government we have sponsored the distribution of more expenditure into the national training system than ever before in Australia’s history. What is absolutely critical is that we need the member for Jagajaga, and her apparently declining but nevertheless official influence in Australian politics, to participate with us to convince state governments to also do their part.

I did not write the Constitution. It was written over 100 years ago and it was written by blokes. I often make the point that, if a few women had been involved, we might have got a few more sensible things in place. But, nevertheless, the Constitution prescribes that education and training is the responsibility of state governments. From the point of view of the Australian government, what we are trying to do is tell the states to stop standing at state borders and looking in and start looking across state borders and seeing themselves as part of an entire nation. If we start to get that sort of approach from state governments, we will not see a continuation of the stupid circumstance of a credential gained in one jurisdiction not being automatically recognised in another jurisdiction. That is why this government and this Prime Minister sponsored an enormous change at the Council of Australian Governments meeting earlier this year—to bring about a recognition of occupational licences in key nation-building traditional trades. State governments are now starting to realise the folly in their ways.

See this speech in context