Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Deakin for his question, and, of course, the member for Deakin comes to this place with a good knowledge about what it is like to get a trade education, having been an electrician before he came into this parliament. The budget was about jobs and opportunities and making sure that Australians can fairly share the opportunities that a strong economy brings, particularly that they can have access to the skills they need in the workforce of today to get ahead. We want Australians to be able to have the benefits of work and we want Australians to be able to have the benefits of opportunity, and that means that people need to be able to get access to the education opportunities which will transform their life chances. Yesterday I spoke about the transformation that is happening in Australian universities as more people get the benefit of a university education and more of those students come from poorer backgrounds and from rural and regional areas.

The budget is about jobs. It is about creating half a million jobs in the next couple of years on top of the 750,000 jobs created under this government to date. And it means that our unemployment rate will fall to 4.5 per cent. We know that our economy will be running near full capacity and that means that it will be hungry for infrastructure, hungry for working people and hungry for skills—and we want to feed that hunger. More than 95,000 Australians started a trade in the last 12 months. That is more Australians starting a trade than at any time in the last decade. I think that is good news. New figures released today by the National Centre for Vocational Educational Research show that there has been a 6.3 per cent increase in the number of Australians in apprenticeships and traineeships in the year to 31 December 2010. Trade training commencements for the 12 months to December 2010 increased by more than 20 per cent. Completions are also rising—not just commencements but completions—making sure people stay the course, stay the journey and get through. They have been growing every quarter since March 2009.

This is good news. We acted quickly to save our skills base and save opportunity in our economy when the global financial crisis hit. Now we want to build on that with a $560 million fund to train up to 130,000 workers, that being a direct partnership with industry so the training will be right for the jobs that industry has going. We will invest $200 million over four years in smarter ways of completing an apprenticeship, and we will devote $100 million of that to support apprentices to progress through training at their pace, so that when they have got the skills they can move through to the next stage.

We will also be investing in mentors. We know that even with increasing completion rates too many young people start an apprenticeship and do not see the journey through. We know good mentoring can make a difference to that and we will be funding 300 experienced mentors to provide much needed support to apprentices. This is all part of making sure our economy stays strong, making sure Australians have got the benefits of work and making sure, too, that Australians can share opportunities by having a chance at a great education.

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