Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to note that the chaos under the waterline of this government has come to the surface today. We woke this morning to find that there is a secret plan to take over VET—so Fairfax are reporting. This government has a track record of slashing funds to apprentices. They have an appalling track record in this space.

A New South Wales government minister has slammed this secret plan and said that this government's track record should mean that it is a place it will not go. As a Victorian, watching the Daniel Andrews Labor government trying to restore TAFE to its pre-Liberal status in our community—to rebuild TAFE—I tell my colleagues in New South Wales: beware of any conservative government that thinks it is going to step in and take over this space.

But the chaos is not just in that area; it is also in the area of science. Today we see—and I will just use the headline, because it is so effective: 'Climate science to be gutted as CSIRO swings jobs axe'. We have a prime minister who claims to believe in climate change. We have a prime minister pretending to be a moderate in these areas. Yet the chaos continues, and jobs will be cut in our very, very important institution of CSIRO. That will see Australia go from leading the world to trailing the world. The PM was right yesterday: nothing seems to have changed.

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