Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I very strongly support this Trade Support Loans Bill 2014 and the Trade Support Loans (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2014. In fact, I think the Trade Support Loans scheme is one of the most things we introduced in the budget and I am so pleased that it is likely to commence, and at last give our trade trainees some semblance of a decent income, as early as July this year.

I am in awe of the previous speaker, the member for Richmond, whose main complaint was that we had done away with a lot of the old regime of trade training in Australia! Well, thank goodness we did, because we had the number of people turning to trades as a career in Australia on a steadily declining trajectory and less than half of our trainees in trades finishing their qualification. There was something seriously wrong. I think it began in Victoria in particular when a Labor state government decided that they would abolish the old technical secondary schools. The idea was that if you were in a tech school you must be an inferior student and you would surely therefore be better off, in terms of feeling good about yourself and learning a decent set of skills for a future career, if you went to what they then named a secondary college.

Tech schools were abolished and everyone was supposed to go along to these secondary colleges. Technical teachers right across the state lost their jobs. All the great old equipment that was used in automotive training, carpentry, plumbing and boiler making was lost to the system. Labor rejoiced because they had a one-stop shop for all students in secondary schooling in Victoria. That was the beginning of the rot—it set in from that point. Right now the coalition government are trying to reinstate technical training in schools with our trades training centres. I am very pleased to have a number of these being established in the electorate of Murray, but they have nothing like the comprehensiveness and very local access that we used to have with the old technical schools.

We know it is incredibly hard for a young or even a middle aged or mature aged trainee in a trade to survive on the current wages that are paid. What we are introducing that this bill is a fantastic opportunity to almost double—to increase by 40 per cent—the income of a trades apprentice so they can survive even if they do not have supportive parents or they are not living at home or they are mature aged with perhaps a partner and children. They will have up to $20,000 in, of course, a completely voluntary loan which will be indexed in line with the CPI. The apprentices will be paid amounts totalling $8,000 in the first year of their apprenticeship, $6,000 in the second year, $4,000 in the third year and $2,000 in the fourth year. These loans will be repayable under arrangements very similar to the Higher Education Loan Program, or HELP, debts—in other words, you do not start to pay until your income reaches a certain threshold.

This is about the coalition recognising that we should not have two standards when the country is considering the needs of our up-and-coming skilled people in the next generation. For a long time we said people getting university degrees were eligible for HECS loans

We said that university students could also have special loans available through the universities themselves. Now we say: so should trainees in trades. Of course they should. This is, I think, a great step. It should, for the sake of so many of our trade trainees, have happened a long time ago.

The previous speaker lamented the loss of the $4,000 tool-kit grant, which was Labor's best effort. Those tool-kit grants were able to be claimed early in the apprenticeship and there was no accountability—there was no requirement that a receipt be forwarded to anyone to show that the apprentice had actually bought tools with this grant. As I say, the vast majority of apprentices gave up on their apprenticeships very early in the piece, which was very disappointing. I suppose it was like the pink batts program, cash for clunkers and GroceryWatch: a good idea from someone all of a sudden, but, with the way Labor managed it, it did not give the individual any better way to live on their very low salaries. They, hopefully, got a box of tools, but it did not keep them in food and fuel for their vehicles.

This is an extraordinarily important bill. I am pleased to note that, in my electorate of Murray, there are 3,055 apprentices in training. I have to say that the majority of the apprenticeships being undertaken are not on the National Skills Needs List. I hope more of our young Australians become familiar with that list when getting career guidance. These $20,000 loans will be available in particular to those who are undertaking an apprenticeship that is on the priority occupation list—but, for the benefit of the previous speaker, who never does her homework, yes, they are also available to agricultural and horticultural apprentices. Yes, they are. It would not have taken much to look that up.

I strongly support this bill. It is going to make a huge difference to the numbers of people who will then be able to support themselves—in fact, live—on the very low apprenticeship wages. I hope it will give them better direction as to which trades are most in need in Australia. I hope more women can take up apprenticeships in what have traditionally been male gender dominated areas like construction and automotive. I certainly am most concerned that, as we saw with the previous speaker, the member for Richmond, we still have this denigration of trade training in Australia where we say it is second rate—'It's not as good as university education, so, no, you shouldn't have the support from the public purse that we have been offering university students for a very long time.' I commend this bill to the House and very much look forward to the program commencing in July.

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