Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We need to have a real debate in this country about how we ensure that learners in the VET system are work ready and future ready. We know that this government is not committed to having a conversation about future-ready workers, but we have to do it. We have to think about how we can build a modern, broad based economy with a serious industry policy. We have to ensure that, as we move forward from the health crisis that we've been through, we leave no-one behind. We need to prepare Australians across all industries to learn the skills of a modern, environmentally friendly economy. This bill before us today, the National Skills Commissioner Bill 2020, does not do that.

As the shadow minister and the member for Sydney has said, Labor will support this bill because we guess it's better than nothing. If you read the title of this bill you would think, perhaps, that a National Skills Commissioner would be a powerful driver of skills reform in Australia, but, sadly, it's not. But that's what we need, and we need a driver of skills reform as part of the debate about how we can move forward through this recession but also how we can make sure that Australia's future generations are work-ready and future-ready. Sadly, at the moment, they're not.

This isn't a crisis that we've come to just because of COVID-19. Before COVID-19 and its impacts, three-quarters of Australian businesses were struggling to find the qualified workers they needed in order to expand and to grow. Last time I went to a meeting of the South East Melbourne Manufacturers Alliance, I was talking to members who couldn't find qualified plumbers for their businesses. They couldn't find qualified plumbers in south-east Melbourne! The lack of work-ready and skill-ready workers is not a crisis that has occurred because of COVID-19. It's something that this Liberal-National government has presided over for six years. And it has not just presided over it; it has contributed to it with its massive cuts to funding for skills, education and training. There were 140,000 apprentices lost under this government, and now we hear, from modelling from the National Australian Apprenticeships Association, that we could be set to lose another 100,000 apprentices by the end of the year.

We can't afford to have this in Australia. We can't afford to have a generation of people who should be entering the workforce missing out. We can't afford to have an older generation who have lost their jobs during this pandemic unable to get the skills and retraining they need to get another job. We can't afford it for the economy, and we can't afford it for the sort of community, the sort of country, that we want to be—one that doesn't leave anyone behind as we move forward.

What we also can't afford is to continue on with a vocational education and training system that does not put public TAFE at its heart. Public TAFE has to be rebuilt, strengthened and supported. It should be at the core of a vocational education and training system. In my electorate of Dunkley, the Chisholm Institute is a foundation of our community. It means so much more than the absolutely magnificent new building that the Andrews Labor state government has funded. It means opportunity for people, young and old. And 'apprentices, trades and skills' doesn't just mean tradies who are building buildings. Of course we need more tradies, but vocational education and training and public TAFEs are about so much more than that. At the Chisholm Institute in Frankston, my community goes to learn skills in art and design; automotive; building trades; business; community services; computer technology; early childhood and education support; employment preparation and foundation; engineering; hair, beauty and make-up; health; higher education; horticulture and conservation; and hospitality and events. There's a range of short courses in arts, computer technology and mechanics, and there's training and assessment skills, VET, VCE, VCAL and workplace safety.

Public TAFE, when you look at that list of courses that are offered, is about the fabric of my community and people having the opportunity to learn and to go to work. Because of the state Labor government, 37 of those courses at the Chisholm Institute in Frankston are free. That's what it means to not leave anyone behind and to future-plan. That's what it means to look at the skills and the workforce that are needed—early childhood education and caring is a very good example of that—and to say, 'We want all of our citizens to have access to that high-quality education and training in the areas that are needed, and it doesn't matter whether you can afford to pay, because it's a public good and a public right.'

We cannot continue with policies that leave people burdened with debt because they are trying to build a better future for themselves by getting vocational education and training, and we on this side of the House know that. Labor knows that. We have a track record. When we were last in government, Labor established Skills Australia in 2008, and it became the Australian Workforce Productivity Agency in 2011. That agency did what there is now some tokenistic talk from the government about. The agency analysed and reported on Australia's current, emerging and future workforce development needs. What happened when the Liberals and Nationals came into government in 2014? It was closed down. So is it any wonder that all of us around the country, in our communities, talk to businesses, both small manufacturing businesses and larger businesses, who say they can't find the skilled workforce that they need? Is it any surprise?

We won't oppose this bill, because it's better than nothing. But, as the shadow minister has said, taking the same people that are currently doing the work and simply giving them a new name within the department is not a real partnership. It's not a partnership between state and federal governments and unions, industry groups and educators to come up with a system that actually works for our people. It is, unfortunately, something that resembles the big announcement that the Prime Minister made about 'JobMaker', which turns out to be nothing more than words—no plan, no funding, no time line, no deliverables. You can't just talk the talk when it comes to vocational education and training; it means too much. It means too much to people who are in crisis now and it means too much for the future of Australia.

There's a lot of talk about how we're going to get through this recession. What we also need to be talking about is how we're going to build a better future as we get through this recession. Australia can't be resilient as a nation, we can't be resilient as a community, if we are not supporting our people to be able to contribute both to their own lives and to the economy, and we can't enable our people to do that unless we properly fund and support public education—public education in our schools, in our universities and, in the vocational education and training sector, in our TAFEs. We have to continue to push and push this government to stand up and do more than just talk about education and training, and actually invest in it—to acknowledge that their cuts of $3 billion and the underspend of $1 billion have had dire consequences for this vocational education and training system. We have to do more.

Labor know this. Our leader, Anthony Albanese, in his 'Jobs and the future of work' speech last year, talked about establishing Jobs and Skills Australia. I know there was scoffing on the government side: 'That's what we're going to do anyway.' No. It's not just words. It's not just putting a group of people in a department and giving it a name. Our proposal was for an independent statutory authority to provide genuine partnership with business leaders, large and small; state and territory governments; unions; education providers; and people who understand particular regions and cohorts—to have a real Jobs and Skills Australia, a collaborative and enduring structure. As we think about the way we work and our interaction with the world around us, as we go through an analysis of what we've experienced in the last few months and where we want to go in the future, that announcement Mr Albanese made in October last year has more and more resonance. It is genuinely about working together for a deliverable, not just talking about it.

More and more of our community now deeply understand that insecure work means, yes, you might have a job, but, when times get tough, if you're the last person in, the last person to be employed, the apprentice, the casual that's been there for less than 12 months, then you're the first person out. More and more Australians understand that insecure work means you might be doing quite well as an independent contractor at the moment, but, when the economic conditions change, your work dries up. More and more people understand that insecure work means needing to have a government that will back you in. That's where a government steps in and says, 'This is how we're going to deal with that insecurity going forward. It's a structural problem; it's a systemic problem. It's not something we will help you out with just for a month or two until we think we've done enough and then take it away and expect you to snap back.' Australians are awakening to what it means to be underemployed and insecure, and they're not going to accept being told, 'Just go back to the way it was,' because they now know what can happen with the click of a finger and the blink of an eye and how badly that can affect them.

As part of this bill today and this commission that the government is establishing there's talk about relying on evidence and data, and that is very welcome. We have to rely on evidence and data in education and training, and elsewhere. On display during this COVID pandemic has been a willingness to rely on scientists and medical evidence and to use data, research and experts to guide policymaking and political decision-making. That has been not only welcome but also successful. We've seen it at the state level and the federal level—a willingness to say, 'These people know what they're talking about; we need to accept what they say and base our response on it.' We can do it for COVID-19. We should be doing it for education and training. We should be doing it for climate change. We should be doing it for investing in preventative health. We should be doing it for justice reinvestment.

I call on members opposite, and the government, to take the attitude that has been shown towards experts, science and data during the COVID-19 crisis and apply it to policy more broadly, to take ideology and fighting culture wars out of how we look at the future and climate change and go back to the science and the experts and fund them to do the work that they need to do so that we can build a better future and go forward, not snap back. The worst thing that we could do coming out of this pandemic and trying to get through a recession is to say that we can snap back to where we were. That's not where we want to go. We want to go forward to a better future. For my community, a community that relies very heavily on our public TAFE system, vocational education and training has to be part of building that better future and taking everyone with us. If we don't put the public provision of vocational education and training and TAFE at the heart of our system, then we will be doing a disservice to the people we represent now and the generations to come.

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