Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It has been quite interesting to hear this afternoon some of the points made by the Minister for Education, Science and Training about this package. Minister, I have a number of words to say, but in particular it is just a case of too little, too late, I am afraid, when it comes to this—far too little and far too late. It is a pity that the minister is now leaving and will not hear the long list of neglect that the Howard government has left behind over the last 10 years when it comes to training. Obviously she does not care and is not interested in relation to this.

It is the Howard government’s decade-long neglect of training that has resulted in the massive skills crisis that we now face in this country which is causing major damage to our economy. It is a major issue that has been brought up on this side of House on so many occasions. The reality is that this skills crisis is purely of the Prime Minister’s doing; it is purely his fault. For 10 long years he has done nothing to help the young people of this nation. It has been 10 long years of neglect—that is what it is; that is what has brought us to this point today. The fault certainly lies with him.

The reason for this crisis is that the Prime Minister, the government and the minister for education place no value on training our young people. What we are seeing and hearing from them today and what we heard from the minister before was about a quick fix. That is what it is: a quick fix and nothing more. ‘How can we spin this one to save our hide?’—that is all they have been doing in here today. First we heard the Prime Minister and then the minister for education. That is all it was about: a quick political fix, not training of our young people.

The reality is: it is not good enough. What the minister had to say is not good enough; what the Prime Minister had to say is not good enough—it is not good enough for the future of our young people and it is not good enough for the future of our nation. The neglect that we have seen from this government goes right to the heart of the lack of values the Prime Minister and this government place on our young people and the future of our nation. They place no value on training young people, no value on fair and just work conditions, no value in a fair go for families and no value in protecting our environment. They have an absolute lack of values when it comes to those very important issues that relate to the future of our nation.

Over the past 10 years, the Prime Minister has denied Australians the opportunity to have real training and a real education so they can better themselves and contribute to our economy. I want the Prime Minister to come in here and answer these questions: in the past 10 years, how many Australians have been denied the chance to reach their true potential; how many tradespeople have we lost in that time; and how many major infrastructure projects have been put on hold because of this massive skills crisis? I believe the values and priorities of the federal government should be about training our young people, to provide jobs and strengthen our economy—that is where their values should lie.

The government’s package that we heard about today raises so many questions. The main questions are: why now, and why have you waited so long? As I said before, the answer is very clear in relation to that: for 10 long years this government has not cared about the future of our nation and our children; this government is concerned about self-preservation and nothing else. That is what this quick fix is all about. This package is not a package providing for the future of our nation; it is a package designed to minimise political damage and that is all it is about.

Let us have a bit of a look at the history of the skills crisis and how we got to this point today. As I said, this government has created the skills crisis. We have had businesses screaming out for years about the need for more skilled staff; we have had the Reserve Bank; we have had so many people within the community talking about it. On this side of the House, we have been talking about it for years, yet the government has repeatedly ignored all of those warnings. In that time, it has turned 300,000 young Australians away from TAFE and, under the Howard government, 40 per cent of apprentices have dropped out of their apprenticeships. As we have heard, there is nothing in this package to address that major problem. The government has done absolutely nothing about it.

According to the OECD, Australia is the only developed country to have reduced public investment in universities and TAFEs since 1995. The government has decreased spending on universities by seven per cent while the rest of the OECD countries have increased spending by 48 per cent. That is an absolutely shameful record. Also, the government has cut $13.7 million from an incentive program to encourage rural and regional businesses to take on apprentices.

Labor has been raising all of these issues year after year. Today, the Prime Minister comes in here and, instead of addressing the real issues that should have been addressed over the last 10 years, puts forward this political fix. What he is doing does not fix the major skills crisis in this country. The crisis has been driving up interest rates and hurting businesses and families. This government has been in complete denial about it. Even yesterday, the Minister for Human Services was in here saying the nation was not suffering a skills crisis but a general labour shortage, and today it is something different. It is absolutely appalling. It goes right to the heart of the government not having an understanding of or a priority for the values that we need in this nation.

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