Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to take a question from the member for Braddon. Last Friday I was in Burnie and Devonport with the member for Braddon. We visited two chambers of commerce. It is indeed an appalling statistic that 20 per cent of young people in the north and north-west of Tasmania are without a job. It was clear to me that the job-destroying carbon tax and the job-destroying Tasmanian Labor government have left these young people without a meaningful pathway from school to work. The cost of doing business in this part of Tasmania is just too high. These jobs should exist—on the farm, in the factory, in forestry, in mining, in agriculture, in aquaculture—and they do not.

Last week I also held a roundtable with the states and territories to revisit and rewrite the national framework for vocational education in schools. This was created in 2001 by the previous coalition government. The previous Labor government had, I think, five ministers for skills, which shows its lack of commitment to trades training and vocational education. Labor spent a lot of time talking about higher education and tertiary education, but instinctively its approach was this: if you have not made it to university, you have not made it at all. Our approach is very much focused on the young people like those that I met in Tasmania with the member for Braddon and on a first-class pathway from school to work. Our approach will have industry at the table. We want to elevate the status of the trades. We understand the importance for every young person to find that pathway.

It is interesting that there are a lot of people doing vocational ed in schools but that only nine per cent of the 40 per cent are in a school based apprenticeship. That needs to increase. We need to have school leading to work. Our approach starts—

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