Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak in this House on something that's incredibly important—the training of Australia's workforce and the rather poor efforts of this government to improve what has been an appalling standard of and commitment to training over the last five years. The member for McPherson, speaking yesterday, summed up the whole problem in one paragraph. I'm going to read a little bit of that and explain why that single paragraph sums up the problem of this government when it comes to training. This is what she said: 'The Turnbull government, in last year's budget, announced the $1.5 billion Skilling Australians Fund, designed to inject much-needed funds into the apprenticeship space.' When I speak about apprenticeships, I'm talking about Australian apprenticeships, including apprentices and trainees. We know that a lot of work needs to be done just to start to lift us up to the levels we had back in 2012-13. In case anybody doesn't understand what that date is, it's the date Labor lost government and the Liberals won government. Since then, training and apprenticeships have fallen to such an extent that the government now needs to act.

The member for McPherson goes on to talk about the disability sector, for example, and health and ageing as some priority areas where 'we know we need to make sure that we have people who are properly skilled, so the $1.5 billion Skilling Australians Fund will put a much-needed injection of funding in there to deal with the shortfall in apprentices'. If you don't know the background to this, all you get out of that is that single sentence which says that the numbers have fallen so seriously since they came to government that they now feel the need to act. But what the member for McPherson doesn't say in there is how much money the government have cut, how they have slashed and burned training in this country. They have actually cut $2.8 billion out of skills and training since they came to government. On top of that, last year alone they cut $637 million from TAFE and training and apprenticeships. So we are now in a situation where there are close to 140,000 fewer trainees and apprenticeships than when the Liberals came to government, including 41,000 fewer trade apprentices.

Since Labor lost government and this government got their hands on the training levers, we have seen an extraordinary drop-off in the amount of money that is invested in our workforce and an extraordinary drop-off in the number of apprentices, the number of people actually training in our workplaces. It is really an indictment of this government. At a time when we know that skills are one of the most important determinants of a country's future, at a time when the need for different skills is changing and growing so rapidly, at the very time probably in the last hundred years when you would be least likely to pull money out of training, that's exactly what we've done. We've got small businesses now saying that finding skilled people is one of their biggest problems, and we're seeing businesses bring people in from overseas in record numbers. This is entirely in the government's lap. This is entirely the result of this government's policy. And now we see a bit of a bandaid.

There are some good things in this legislation. The government are increasing the levy that businesses pay when they bring in an overseas worker, but they are only increasing it by $10 a week—hardly enough to dramatically change the behaviour of businesses in the decisions they make about whether or not to bring people in from overseas. But it still shows no real commitment. For a start, they are not even beginning to undo the damage they have done—not in any way. It's such a small amount of money relative to the damage they've already done. The money itself also depends on overseas visas. It essentially comes from there. There's $1.47 billion in the budget papers, which the member for McPherson calls $1.5 billion, with $1.2 billion of that coming from these training contribution charges and about $261 million coming from government funds to tide the program over until the fees start to be collected in March 2018. So, really, the small amount that they are contributing comes from bringing in skilled migrants. If that number falls because the training miraculously improves—unlikely—we would then see that amount of money shrink again. So the training actually comes from the bringing in of overseas workers. It's a strange sort of reliance between the amount of money we have to train and the number of people that are being brought in from overseas. It's too little and it should have been addressed quite some time ago.

On this side of the House, we've been talking about skills shortages since we lost government. Since the first cuts came through, people on this side of the House that care passionately about skills have been talking about TAFE, have been talking about our vocational education and training system. We were talking about it while we saw it go into freefall with the rorts in the vocational education system, with colleges that had virtually no graduates—no graduates at all—in spite of receiving millions of dollars of taxpayers' money. We have been talking about it—we on this side have been yelling about it—

Mr Giles interjecting—

Yes, the member for Cunningham has been incredibly vocal on this, but so have industry groups, so have our TAFEs, so have people in my community. People all around the country have been yelling at this government, asking them to do something, and this is too little and much, much too late.

The biggest concern for me is that this approach by the government has no real commitment to labour testing. In my community, where about 60 per cent of people were born overseas, I have people coming into my office who have come to Australia from elsewhere—they have come from India, Malaysia, Africa, you name it. They have come with skills. They have come as skilled migrants, and they have watched other people from their first homeland come into Parramatta on skilled visas, with no better skills than theirs, and occupy the jobs that they could have got. My Indian Australians in the workplace know who's an Indian Australian and who's a foreign worker, and they're two different things. My Indian Australians work here. They came to Australia to settle. They have families here. This is where they live. This is where their commitment is for the rest of their life and their children's lives. Yet they are being squeezed out of the labour market now by people with no better skills who come in on temporary visas. And this doesn't happen just occasionally. This is a common story now that I hear in my electorate.

So the commitment to labour testing—making sure that, in order for a business to bring in a worker from overseas, they have tried to find an Australian first—actually matters. I doubt that there's anybody out there, other than the people on the government benches and a few businesses who seek to exploit foreign workers, who wouldn't agree with me. We need Australians to work, we need our young people to know that they can and, in order to ensure that, we need to make sure that we have proper market testing.

The ACTU released some interesting figures lately that say that 10 per cent of the Australian labour force are on temporary working visas. That's extraordinary. So I would say to people that, when the government stand up here and talk about the number of jobs they've created in the last year, you have to ask them how many jobs they've created for Australians, or whether the slack nature of the market testing means that many of those jobs are filled by people who do not have better skills than Australians, but those jobs are in companies that didn't bother to make sure there wasn't an Australian available first.

The proper market testing in Labor's policy gives a real indication of just how serious this is. I'm going to read Labor's market testing requirements, which were put forward in our private member's bill Migration Amendment (Putting Local Workers First) Bill, back in 2016. When I read these to you, you'll think, 'What? That isn't already the case?' Because it's not. There will be a mandatory requirement for all jobs to be advertised as part of labour market testing obligations, a requirement that jobs be advertised for a minimum of four weeks, a requirement for labour market testing to have been conducted no more than four months before the nomination of a 457 visa worker and—the fact that you even have to put this next one in, but you do, because this is what is actually happening—a ban on job advertisements that target only overseas workers or specified visa class workers to the exclusion of Australian citizens and permanent residents. In other words, Labor believes that you should have to advertise to Australians—that it's not okay to place ads where Australians don't see them. It's not okay to do that. It's not okay to say, 'Only people on 457s may apply.' The government thinks it's okay to do that. The government isn't interested in ensuring that Australians get the first crack at jobs.

We also require a crackdown on job ads that set unrealistic and unwarranted skills and experience requirements for vacant positions with the effect of excluding otherwise suitable applicants, because we know that's happening too. So that's Labor's policy. But, in this bill in front of us and the government's approach to this, labour market testing is not strict enough. They do not have a commitment to ensuring that Australians get the jobs first.

In my electorate, that is incredibly important. Those in my electorate come from all over the world. They bring skills from all over the world. They bring language skills, they bring knowledge of culture, they bring flexibility, they bring an ability to span more than one cultural norm. They are incredibly valuable workers, and we can see that in the fact that there are now head offices and regional offices of some of the big accounting firms moving in. You can see the big companies starting to move into Western Sydney because they want its labour force. But, in spite of that, we have far too many—far too many—people who are unemployed.

Parramatta's unemployment rate in the 2016 census was 2.5 per cent higher than the average in Sydney and 1.5 per cent higher than the national average. So we have a high unemployment rate and many, many skilled people in my community that should be in work can't get in. They tell me of labour hire companies that are being used to fill vacant positions in some of the companies in the area, and that those labour hire companies only employ overseas workers. They recruit overseas, they do not recruit locally—and this government thinks that's okay. This government, the Abbott-Turnbull government, is not prepared to stand up for Australian workers when it comes to market testing.

Youth unemployment in some areas of Parramatta can reach over 50 per cent. In the south of my electorate, according to the social atlas commissioned by the Parramatta City Council, there are areas with over 50 per cent youth unemployment. That's not okay, and it's not okay that you say to those Australians: 'We don't require businesses to look at you first. We don't require businesses to train you.' It's not okay that the government has cut $2.8 billion out of the training budget and left so many of those young people without the opportunity to gain skills.

We also have a situation in Parramatta where we're already seeing the effect of that slash and burn in training, with fewer and fewer people doing diplomas and certificates in vocational training places. We're already below the national average by five per cent for cert III, and that is a direct result of this government's incompetence in managing the vocational education system when we saw it in freefall due to the rorts and ripping off of taxpayers' money by various training companies, who were taking money and not providing the training. When I'm doorknocking in some of the areas in the south of the electorate, I'm finding people who were enrolled in courses without their knowledge—incredible rip-offs. This government was so slow to act, just as it has been slow to react on the reduction in apprentice numbers. There are 1,111 fewer apprentices in Parramatta now than there were when we lost government in 2013. It is shameful. Areas like Granville South have seen people dropping out of school before year 9 at rates five per cent above the Sydney average.

Again, what have the government done to give young people the idea that there is actually a place for them in the work force and a training path for them? They have hacked away at our training system, cut $2.8 billion and sat silent and inactive while our vocational education system went through the floor in terms of its standards and quality. Now what we've got is a bandaid solution that does not actually deal with the issues. There is insufficient money and commitment to training, and there is insufficient genuine commitment to market testing that ensures that Australians get a first crack at a job when it becomes available—that Australians get a job and Australian families get the first crack. These labour hire companies that only recruit overseas should not exist here. There should be no job given to an overseas worker unless we have sought an Australian first. It is a bandaid solution, not good enough, and you will be condemned.

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