Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

It's a set up, the Prime Minister said! In the years between 2011 and 2013, the Labor Party cut incentives for apprenticeships not once, not twice, not three times, but nine times—$1.2 billion. And who can remember the VET FEE-HELP disaster, where you had funding for courses like veterinary Chinese herbal medicine, graduate community advocacy and a diploma in lifestyle consultation? They were the courses of the Labor Party.

In contrast, the Turnbull government is delivering a $1.5 billion Skilling Australians Fund and supporting 300,000 aspirational apprenticeships, while a $70 billion infrastructure rollout is looking to support apprentices all the way and the VET system is now getting going. At the end of the day, you can look at the Labor Party record, where they cut all the apprenticeships and they cut money out of the program, or, in contrast, you can see we're creating hundreds of thousands of new positions for aspirational apprentices across the country.

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