Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Preventing Family Violence) Share this | Hansard source

It's refreshing to hear a coalition person reflect on the value of a university education. It's great that the assistant minister thinks that education can—if it's a university education—sometimes lead to very worthwhile work. It's in particularly sharp contrast to the Prime Minister's conduct today in question time, when he used the word 'educated' to refer to Labor members as though it was an insult, and when he was claiming that we don't understand aspiration—which I thought was quite interesting. At the same time as he was saying that we were educated elites he was also claiming that we didn't understand aspiration. He was implying that education was somehow insulting to us at the same time as he was claiming people needed to develop their aspiration to get ahead in life. He can't have his cake and eat it too. Either he thinks it's great that Labor members have gone from a situation like mine, where my parents didn't go past grade 10 and I did get to go to university and to go into a great middle-class occupation, that of being a lawyer—either he thinks it's great to have that sort of aspiration and for people from working-class backgrounds to get to move into middle-class occupations and have social mobility in this country or he thinks it's an absolute travesty, but he can't have them both.

He certainly can't claim that Labor members don't understand aspiration, because we exemplify aspiration. We have aspiration in our bones. It was Bob Hawke who thought about a fair chance for all, with the precursor to the HEPPP, the program that we now have today. There have been 25 years of programs aimed at getting equity into higher education participation. When you hear people like the assistant minister stand up and say, 'We just want the right sort of people at university and the right sort of people in vocational education,' unfortunately, sometimes that's just code for wanting middle-class kids at uni and working-class kids in vocational education.

I want a future where the poorest kid has as much opportunity to go to university as the richest kid, and where the richest kid has as much interest in going into vocational education as the poorest kid. I want to elevate the status of vocational education and elevate the opportunity to go into university. They are equally important—absolutely they are—but you don't get to just claim that if you're not going to fund public TAFE and vocational education properly.

If the assistant minister is looking for ideas on how to do something about the fact that, under the coalition's watch, there are 140,000 fewer apprentices now than when they took office in 2013 and that there has been a 40 per cent reduction in the number of apprentices in my electorate, she should look no further than the fact that, as well as being able to influence vocational education and opportunities for apprentices through regulation, legislation and government programs, government can also have an impact through its role as a purchaser of services, through procurement. Government could quite easily say that it is a condition of doing business with government that, for example, one in 10 people working on a government civil construction project must be apprentices. In fact, we know it's possible because it's our policy. Bill announced this more than a year ago. In his first major speech last year, the Leader of the Opposition announced that Labor's policy would be to make sure that there is primacy of publicly funded TAFE and to make sure that there are opportunities for apprentices, including through procurement policies, that say one in 10 workers on a government funded procurement project would have to be apprentices. Will the assistant minister take up Labor's policy of ensuring that one in 10 workers on government procured projects are apprentices? Will the assistant minister do that with a view to using government procurement as a force for better training outcomes and better training participation in this country?

This party is not a party that's in any way above using procurement and funding mechanisms. If you want an example of that, look no further than the Building Code, the Building Code that the Australian Building and Construction Commission enforced and, before it, the Building Industry Taskforce had an interest in. That code set conditions for workplace relations arrangements as a condition of getting government work. They've used procurement before. In fact, they did the same in universities. Remember the higher-education workplace relations requirements, the HEWRRs, they used to try to force academics off collective agreements and onto individual contracts? It was a very long time ago. This government is led by the Liberals, of course, who have got form in using procurement for, I would say, quite nefarious purposes. Will the government now consider using procurement for the forces of good?

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