Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

I am not denigrating the occupations of providing manicures and providing make-up services—but I am suggesting that Australia’s skills shortages are in areas where the former government did not invest. Part of Labor’s strategy is to broaden and deepen our investment so that we can meet the skills shortages in the economy. We will be addressing that with our 450,000 training places. We will be addressing that with skills investment at certificate III level and beyond. We will be addressing that with urgent investment in skills shortage areas. The former government neglected the skills crisis; the present opposition does not even realise it exists. We will be investing to fix it, to make sure that working Australians can upgrade their skills and unemployed Australians can get access to training, and to make sure we take inflationary pressures out of this economy.

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