Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question and for his great interest in making sure that young Australians, particularly Western Australians, are able to get apprenticeships and go into jobs, because we know that that provides them with a greater future.

In this budget we confirmed the abolition of the 457 visa program, Labor's dodgy 457 visa program, that saw rorts from the west coast to the east coast. The reality was that when the Leader of the Opposition was the employment minister in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years he added 40,000 workers under the 457 visa program, who came into our country to take jobs that should have been directed to young Australians and to Australians who had found themselves made redundant toward the end of their working career. Whatever the case may have been, those jobs were given by the Leader of the Opposition in his then capacity as employment minister to people who came from overseas. We have tidied the program up, but in the budget last night we went further. We announced the introduction of the Skilling Australians Fund levy, which will be $1,200 for each applicant under the new arrangement. That $1,200 is for a small business and it is $1,800 for big businesses. It will raise in total a fund of about $1.5 billion. The important thing is what we are going to do with this money. We are going to put it into apprenticeships—300,000 apprentices will receive assistance under this fund: the trainees, pre-apprentices and those people who need assistance to upskill to move into another job.

This government has put Australians first for Australian jobs, and we make no apology about it. We came into this parliament with Labor having lost control of our borders. We have taken back control of our borders, we have put the government back in charge of who comes to this country and we have been determined from day one to make sure that we put Australian workers into Australian jobs. The Leader of the Opposition has a track record of having sold out Australian workers, not only as the employment minister in the Rudd years but also when he was a union leader. We have demonstrated time after time and in question time after question time the way in which the Leader of the Opposition has ripped off workers, whether it was when he was a union leader or when he was the employment minister.

This Leader of the Opposition is known to the Australian public as somebody who cannot be trusted. When the Australian public looks at the Leader of the Opposition—and I saw him on the Today show today—they know he cannot be trusted. They know in the backs of their minds that there is something not right about the Leader of the Opposition. He has one story for one audience and the complete opposite for the next audience that he attends. That is why the member for Grayndler is so excited about this budget. (Time expired)

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