Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

What the Deputy Leader of the Opposition conveniently ignores is the termination point of collective agreements. They come in groups, often in large concentrations, and as a result you may find industrial activity increases at those times. I also return to the other argument I advanced yesterday in this discussion. It goes back to the overall supply of labour—both skilled labour and unskilled labour. Having received 20 warnings from the Reserve Bank on an inadequate supply of labour, an inadequate skills supply in the economy and a lack of infrastructure, and having had 12 years to act on this, I would have thought that those opposite, when they had the opportunity to in government, would have done something by way of a radical investment in skills strategy and a radical investment in infrastructure; instead, they did not. On the question of skills, this government, quite apart from the other initiatives contained in the budget, has now created Skills Australia and will be advancing through the establishment of an $11 billion education investment fund which in part will deal with the future of the TAFE and training system in the country—

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