Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

Never stand in the way of the coalition and a three-word slogan. The latest one is 'jobs and growth'. Do you know what you need for jobs and growth? You need skilled workers. The challenge is skills now and skills in the future. Industry say they can't find enough skilled people in this country. With the unemployment rate the way it is, it is astounding that that is the case. We will need skills in the future because of what technology will do in terms of jobs. Knowing these two challenges, what are we confronted with? We've had $3 billion ripped out of skills development in this country since the coalition has been in. If that's not enough, they want to rip out another $300 million.

I mention this because today is National TAFE Day, a day to thank those people in the TAFE system who back Australian workers and back people getting the skills to make a meaningful contribution to Australia's economy. What we're also saying is that we on the Labor side back TAFE. We will scrap up-front fees for 100,000 people wanting to use TAFE. We will modernise TAFE facilities, particularly in rural and regional areas. We will provide more opportunities for Australian apprentices. We'll also make sure that we give older workers the opportunity to retrain. It is about backing people in this country. TAFE is the flagship skills development authority in this country. It is time we backed them, not kept cutting their funds.

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