Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was not because of the sad and relentless negativity, a good example of which are the interjections here; it was not even because of the appalling small-mindedness that we continue to see from this government; it was because of the total lack of vision that we saw on the other side of the chamber. That is what this government delivers up day after day after day. This really worries me because this is a time when we really need vision. When we think about whether we are prepared for the economy of the future—the important policy debate that the government is so enthusiastically trying to participate in—we see a few things that we probably should be concerned about. I will talk about some of these issues. One of them is our engagement with Asia. All Australians out there on the street can tell you that Asia is going to be important to Australia's future, but I think that probably not many of them know that only nine per cent of Australian businesses are actually doing business in Asia today. Another indicator that worries me is that, over the last decade in Australia, we have seen stagnation in the improvements to our year 12 retention rate, and yet a lot of the countries we are competing with are seeing improvements there. Even when we look more broadly at the performance of our education system, we see real causes for concern. Australia's education system is declining in performance year after year, and the countries that we have previously thought of as countries that we would be giving the great ideas to are now outperforming us. China, for example, is right up there at the top of the league tables.

Jobs of the Future fits into this important discussion about where we as a country are going. I have spoken a little bit in the parliament today about some of the reasons why we might be really optimistic about the future opportunities for Australia. It is true that Australia has a really important history of innovation. Australian scientists are incredible people. They invented spray-on skin. They invented the black box. The CSIRO was integral to the invention of wi-fi. All these things give me cause to think really positively about the future. But I think the seismic shift in the way our economy functions had not been really well discussed in this parliament until the Leader of the Opposition gave his Budget reply speech a few days ago. The Leader of the Opposition talked about the fact that, in about two decades, about 47 per cent of the jobs that exist in our economy today will be gone. That is enormous change—certainly change that we have not seen in the last 20 years in Australia. As the economy changes, we are seeing low- and middle-skill jobs disappear and more and more high-skill jobs being created. The Leader of the Opposition made the important point that 75 per cent of the fastest-growing job categories are in these stem professions. When we look at whether our economy is prepared for this future that is available to it, we also see a lot of causes for concern—75 per cent of the jobs that are growing are in stem professions. Yet, as our shadow minister for communications foreshadowed, the number of ICT graduates Australia is producing is actually declining. We want to debate these issues, we want to have this discussion, yet what we see from the government is guffawing and laughing and a relentless focus on the politics of the day to day. I think it is very sad.

I want to talk about some of the things Labor wants to do in response to these really important changes that are going to affect the lives of all Australians over the next 50 years so. One of the ideas that the Leader of the Opposition talked about in his Budget reply speech is the Smart Investment Fund. This is a really important idea—half a billion dollars that Labor wants to see put into this important start up community. Seek.com, for example, started with a $2.5 million grant from government and it is now a $5 billion organisation. We can see government playing a really important role here. We have talked a little bit in this debate about coding, so I will not cover that ground again. But I just want to say that the third and final component of this was around stem education. The Leader of the Opposition spoke about some really important ways that we can increase participation in stem education, especially the participation of women. Labor is the only political party in Australia talking about this. I am really proud of that and I just wish that the government would step up and show some leadership on these subjects.

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