Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow the member for Lalor in this debate on the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Governance and Other Matters) Bill 2020. I, too, whilst not opposing the legislation, speak in support of the amendments moved by Labor. The Morrison government has a shameful track record on supporting skills and vocational training in this country. Its abandonment of skills training since coming to office in 2013 will be looked back on by future generations as one of the catastrophic failures of the Abbott, Turnbull and now Morrison governments. It has left Australia vulnerable. It has left Australia unprepared.

First, it was the rorting of the VET sector by shonky operators, where we saw millions of dollars paid out to crooked training operators for training that was never delivered or delivered to non-existent trainees or for courses that did not meet relevant training standards and ultimately undermined the reputable TAFE system. These were scam operators who were able to exploit the VET system under this government's watch even after what was going on had become very clear. Simultaneously, the government white-anted the public TAFE system by cutting $3 billion of funding or simply not spending the funds allocated. Over the last five years, the underspend has been around $919 million. The result has been a training sector in crisis, a national skills shortage, a closure of TAFEs around Australia and a reliance on overseas skilled migration.

The facts speak for themselves. Between 2013 and 2019, apprenticeship numbers across Australia fell by almost 140,000—from 412,000 to 276,000. Those figures are now over a year old. The numbers would very likely be much worse today, but the government doesn't seem to want to release those latest figures. I ask: why not? I suspect it's because they will tell an even more damning story. The number of apprentices didn't fall because of a skills glut in Australia. There was not an oversupply of apprentices or tradies. It was because the funding and the training places were simply not there.

At the same time, industry sectors were facing skills shortages. What was the Liberal government's response to that? It was to bring in skilled migrants from overseas. In 2018-19, Australia recruited 110,000 skilled permanent migrants and 41,000 skilled temporary migrants to fill skills shortages. The government has been doing that year on year for several years now. Those are all skills shortages that could have been filled by Australians had they been trained. Skilled migration has dominated Australia's migration intake. Of course we should be grateful for those skilled migrants who came to Australia and filled job vacancies, enabling productivity or services to continue. However, the flip side of that is that I often speak to young people or to their parents about the difficulty that they have in getting an apprenticeship in a vocation in which Australia has a national skills shortage.

In my own state of South Australia, the apprenticeship situation is even worse. Apprenticeship numbers in South Australia have more than halved since 2013, from around 33,000 to around 16,000. Again, those figures are a year old, and I suspect the numbers are much lower today. When the South Australian Liberal government took office, it added to the demise by closing TAFEs, including three in my own region at Tea Tree Gully, Port Adelaide and Parafield, again, not only closing the ability of people in South Australia to skill up but closing opportunities to young people in that part of Adelaide—young people who don't always have the money to drive from one side of Adelaide to the other in order to get the training that they need. The Marshall government also cut TAFE funding from an average of about $441 million over the last decade to $347 million in 2018, and it seems that there will be a further $15 million cut in this financial year. Those cuts will inevitably result in job losses and fewer courses available.

Not all people want or are suited to university study, but they may be attracted to a trade career if they are given the opportunity. Yet federal and state Liberal governments cut back those opportunities by cutting the funding. They seem to have this view that it's up to industry to train the people that they need. And, whilst I don't have a problem with industry doing that, the government equally has a responsibility to ensure that we have sufficient training places and opportunities for people in this country—so much so that industry sectors like the Civil Contractors Federation South Australia are establishing their own apprenticeship and group training organisation in order to overcome skills shortages. In other words, they can't rely on the government, so they have to do it themselves. Now, I applaud them for doing that, because I know that industry led training organisations do a good job. It's in their interests to do so. They want the people that come out of the training to be trained up to the standards that they want them to work at once they become employees.

At the beginning of this year there were over 4,000 registered training organisations in Australia. I'm not convinced that they were all needed or that they all provide value-for-money training, so I'm hoping that this legislation will raise confidence in the VET sector. The legislation makes two structural changes to the oversight of VET training in Australia. It replaces the current Australian Skills Quality Authority hierarchy of three commissioners with one single CEO, and then there will be a 10-person-maximum advisory council appointed to provide advice to the CEO. Other members on our side have already raised the concern about the selection process. We don't know how it's going to take place or who will be appointed. I assume that, if there are nine people on that panel, there will be at least one from each state, but even then it doesn't give me confidence that it will be a properly representative panel. That is going to be critical to how effective this whole legislation is. Having said that, I have to say the legislation in itself and that change are not going to make the drastic changes to skills training in this country that the country urgently needs. I see it more as something that the government is doing in order to pretend that it is an issue that it has on its agenda and to pretend that it is making advancements in respects of skills training across Australia. Nevertheless, it is something we don't oppose. But it will be interesting to see in two or three years time what effect that advisory panel and having a single CEO has had in the system across Australia.

Ultimately, its effectiveness will be dependent on the competence of the CEO and the members of the advisory council, so it is important that we have the right people in those positions. I do note, however, that the advisory council will not provide advice to the regulator in relation to particular registered training organisations or particular VET accredited courses. Whilst the advisory council is there to oversee the regulator, I would have thought that, if we pull together a panel of nine people who have expertise in VET training, the regulator might want to take advice from them about all sorts of matters relating to VET training in Australia. Why waste the experience that these people will supposedly have? Regardless of whether it's simply to do with the regulator's position, or whether it is to do with actual courses or, indeed, other training organisations, I would have thought that that panel should be there to provide all kinds of advice. It doesn't mean the regulator, or the government for that matter, has to take the advice, but they should at least consult the council wherever an issue arises where its advice could very well be useful.

As I said earlier, this legislation tinkers around the edges of the skills crisis in Australia. Like so much of what this government does, there is a lot of spin over substance with respect to it. There's been much fanfare and big announcements by this government, but often very little delivered. I refer to the announcement by the government in March of this year that up to $21,000 would be allocated between 1 January and 30 September for each apprentice or trainee employed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Again, that was a measure that I welcomed, and I think it was the right thing to do. At the time, the government claimed that the measure would support up to 70,000 small businesses employing around 117,000 apprenticeships. What we don't know, and what we haven't heard since—and I've certainly never heard any statistics with respect to this—is: what was the take-up rate of that support? It seems to me that, because the government hasn't been using the statistics, perhaps the take-up rate wasn't very high. If it was, I'm happy to be corrected. It's a matter that I've got an interest in and I would certainly like to know. As I say, it's a matter where I suspect it was a case of the government putting spin over substance once again. There have been debates in this House time and time again with respect to skills training across Australia. There is no doubt in my mind that it is an important issue. And there is no doubt in my mind that over recent years this country has done badly with respect to skills training.

Recently in South Australia we also had commentary that the naval shipbuilding work that is proposed for South Australia might hit a stumbling block because we simply don't have enough skilled people in that state. I suspect that a lot of the skilled people we did have may have left the state because of the work winding down the way it did—again, under this government. If that is the case it's a sad indictment on this government that it allowed the situation to get to that point. I would certainly hope, given that much of that shipbuilding work hasn't started yet, that in the years ahead and in the immediate years ahead we will recommit to training people so that, once the work does start and the employment is there, it is South Australians, and Australians for that matter, who take up that work, rather than what we're seeing elsewhere which is people coming in from overseas in order to fill the skills shortages.

I'll finish on this note: over recent months I have had discussions with several people who have come to me because they have a son or a daughter who hasn't been able to get work and, in particular, hasn't been able to get work in a trade that they were pursuing. They can't get the work because the employers find it impossible to take them on when there is not enough support for them. Again, it is the industry itself, the people that would otherwise say, 'I would take on an apprentice if I was given more support from the government.' But they won't. Again, I think it's high time that this government understood that there are opportunities there, that there are young people who would like to enter a trade or a career of one kind or another but they are simply blocked out because for too long this government has cut the funding—as has the state government in my state of South Australia—that would enable those people to pursue the career or the vocation they would like to.

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