Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I again thank the member for Reid for his question. I talked before about the stimulus package that we as a government entered into and which saw this economy, the only developed country in the world, avoid the recession. Part of the reason for that stimulus package was to invest in activities that in part were about creating job activity. The BER program was an important part of that, comprising some $16 billion of the $42 billion that was spent.

I make that point because investing in education is one of the most important investments a country can make. As a government we have made a commitment to lift year 12 retention rates and we have made a commitment to lift the proportion of people with diploma qualifications and with higher education qualifications. Why are we doing this? Because all the evidence suggests that a nation lifts its productivity if its lifts its educational attainment. There is a productivity dividend for such an investment. So physical infrastructure is very important because these are the buildings in which people get taught and learn. It is not just the BER program and the big investment through the secondary schools in science and language labs, which you would be aware within your own electorate, but also the trade training centres, which the minister who will come after this session will be able to talk about as well.

In this budget we also committed to an important package for skills development. We invested $560 million in the National Workforce Development Fund, which will give industry a decision making capacity for substantial Australian government investment in workforce development. Why is this important? Because we know that, having avoided the recession and still on the wave of a significant resources boom, one of the capacity constraints we have to avoid is skill shortages. If we do not equip ourselves to train people properly here, the only other alternative is to look at doing it through migration programs. It is far better for a country to use the physical facilities to invest in the training activities being undertaken. This is a significant investment in working with industry to identify the skill shortage areas and then seeking to address them. I might also say that in my portfolio responsibility of regional development we want to take that exercise local. So there will be active engagement by Regional Development Australia, the bodies at the regional level, to help us identify what the skill shortages are in the particular regions and develop packages accordingly. That is a very important development.

I was also asked about the changes to allow job seekers on youth allowance to keep more of what they earn. I can advise the House that the initiatives presented in the budget included allowing young job seekers on youth allowance to keep more of what they earn through increasing the income free area from $62 to $143 per fortnight, increasing the working credit from $1,000 to $3,500 and in addition providing a more generous income test taper rate for single principal carers on Newstart allowance from 1 January 2013. This means that parents will be able to earn up to $400 per fortnight, on top of the $946 per fortnight that they currently earn before their income support payment is taken out.

In relation to the problem of young people who are neither working nor studying, we do not want young people to be unemployed. The option for them is either work or training. Unemployment should not be an option. There are important new initiatives in this budget that will help secure that outcome for them—good for them; good for the nation.

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