Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I want to say at the outset that we'll be moving a second reading amendment at the conclusion of my comments, so my comments today will go to the second reading amendment and to the bill. Labor will be supporting the Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No. 7) Bill 2021. The three amendments it makes to treasury laws are relatively minor and not controversial as far as they go. That said, the second reading amendment that will be moved, and which has been circulated in my name, highlights some specific failings of this government which I will come to in due course. Before I do that, I want to go through the bill and why Labor will support it.

Schedule 1 relates to the collection of data from companies operating in the gig economy by the Australian tax office. It implements a measure recommended by the Black Economy Taskforce some two years ago and is aimed at ensuring electronic platform operators pay the correct amount of tax. Some of those platform operators argued during this inquiry that the data-gathering requirements were too onerous. We did not agree. We took the same view as the Tax Institute—that the platform providers are well placed to collect such data. I'm pleased that the majority of the committee which inquired into this bill concurred with Labor's view.

Schedule 2 amends the financial complaints authority act to facilitate the closure of the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal. The tribunal ceased operations in December last year and stopped accepting new cases in November 2018, so this bill relates to the transfer of information that the tribunal had over to the new body, AFCA, which now handles complaints about superannuation. It is nothing more than housekeeping, and we support those provisions.

Schedule 3 removes the $250 non-deductible threshold for taxpayers' work-related self-education expenses from next financial year. This is a welcome but minor change that will make things a touch easier for workers to train themselves up. Unfortunately, it's a paltry effort which represents the sum total of the Morrison government's plan to address the burgeoning skills crisis that is staring them in the face. It's not like this crisis is flying under the radar. Just last week, Infrastructure Australia issued the government its loudest possible warning. It says that, within two years, one in three skilled positions needed to build this nation's infrastructure will go unfilled. Just think about that. Over the course of the next few days, members of the National Party are going to press-gang the Liberal Party to accept billions and billions of dollars in untested infrastructure projects to assist them to grease through some media commitments ahead of the Glasgow climate change summit. Wouldn't it be extraordinary if, but for the want of workers, those projects could not go ahead or, if they do, they'll go ahead at exceptionally inflated prices?

That's 105,000 unfilled job vacancies for a huge variety of skilled jobs—electricians, painters and joiners, engineers and geologists, architects, and the list goes on. These people are quite literally building the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. That's billions of dollars of infrastructure projects we desperately need that either are going to be slowed down or won't be able to proceed at all because of the government's short-sightedness and incompetence on the issue of skills and workforce development. This warning is coming from the government's own independent infrastructure adviser, whose sole purpose is to keep our infrastructure-building pipeline on track to ensure that we don't have a stop and start, and so that we can ensure that the desperately needed economic infrastructure to build the recovery and get the economy whirring again is built and delivered on time. It simply cannot happen unless you have a workforce which is capable of doing it, and yet Infrastructure Australia advises that there are literally thousands of vacancies that will not be able to be filled. This warning has not been heeded by the government. That's just one sector of the economy, and it's coming at us in two to three years time.

As any member of this chamber will know if they've been listening to small businesses in their electorate, particularly in the hospitality sector, the skills crisis is already upon us. Whether it's bars, cafes, food and beverage establishments or fast-food stores, right across the hospitality industry, in accommodation services, there is a desperate shortage of skilled workers. The backpackers aren't filling those jobs as they once did, and it's uncertain when they will be able to. It certainly won't happen anytime this year, and it's unlikely to happen anytime in the near future. This applies to hospitality workers, retail workers and building and construction industry workers. If you cannot get a plumber, an electrician or a carpenter to your house to do a desperately needed repair at a decent price or to do that renovation that you've been thinking about throughout the lockdown, there's a simple reason for it: government failure. Government has failed to invest in skills, in apprentices and trainees, and every Australian household is paying the price, with the cost of renovation and simple repairs going up and up and up.

There is an answer. People used to come from the rest of the world to study it here in Australia. It's called TAFE. But successive coalition governments, with an absolute abject hatred of TAFE, have ripped the guts out of the system such that it will struggle to meet the needs of a growing economy. There's a fashionable view among some who sit opposite that the crisis is something new, brought on by the need to close borders during the pandemic. They no doubt agree with the New South Wales Premier, who is suggesting that we import workers from overseas in numbers roughly equal to the population of Perth to solve the problem. Let me tell you: they're having themselves on.

First of all, there was a crisis before the pandemic. In this government's first eight years, the number of apprenticeships fell by over 100,000 places. Every year, we have seen fewer and fewer apprentices and trainees in training. It's on the heads of those opposite, and Australian households are paying the price of this today. In other words, if those opposite had done nothing, we would have had a fighting chance of filling the skilled vacancies that Infrastructure Australia is now warning about. But they didn't do nothing; they cut places, and now it's this nation's workers and businesses who are paying the price.

Then there's a second issue. You can't simply import 400,000 workers at the drop of a hat. I'm familiar with the accommodation situation for hospitality workers in the Illawarra and the South Coast. They are met with a twin crisis: a workforce shortage and a housing crisis. Even if the government were able to find workers somewhere in the rest of Australia or the rest of the world and bring them to our region, there's nowhere for them to stay. We have an accommodation crisis and we have a skills crisis. It is upon us and it is choking the economic recovery, and all this mob over here can do is play parlour games as if, on those benches opposite, you have the government and the opposition in the one party room. These challenges are far too big to be subject to the hostage games of the National Party and the internal bickering and squabbling and incompetence that is the coalition government.

What we actually need to do is to invest in the long-term industrial future of this country by training local workers. The pandemic is not an excuse to import workers at the expense of reskilling local workers. In a few months time, there will be hundreds of thousands of kids who will be leaving our schools with the hope of finding a job, an apprenticeship or a traineeship. We don't have the training places to meet their needs and aspirations.

My electorate of Whitlam is a perfect example of why, if anything, the need for investment in skills and training is more urgent than ever. Over the pandemic, over 10½ thousand workers in the Illawarra lost their jobs. I hope, as the economy starts to open up again, the overwhelming majority of them will find their way back into full-time employment, some of them, perhaps, going back into part-time employment. We want each and every one of them to find their way back into a job, because we know that there is no economic recovery unless we are bringing all of those people along with us and leaving nobody behind.

We have 10½ thousand workers who are, in many cases, going to need retraining. Who's going to do it? This government has ripped the guts out of TAFE, weakening its capacity to retrain workers to meet the economic needs of recovery. We have had over 800 TAFE teachers lose their jobs over the last eight years on this government's watch. That's more than 100 TAFE teachers each year—each year less than the year before. In my own electorate, they've closed down an entire campus at Dapto, one of the biggest, fastest-growing suburbs in my electorate. It will be called a city within a few years time, and it doesn't have a TAFE. The TAFE has been closed down on this government's watch. We've seen a 20 per cent fall in the number of skilled training places available over the last eight years.

It's a pretty sorry record, when you look at it: 800 fewer TAFE teachers, the closure of TAFE campuses in my electorate and right around the country, and a 20 per cent fall in the number of skilled training places available to young Australians leaving school or Australians seeking to re-enter the workforce. That's what happens when you hollow out the skills and training system—you also hollow out the industrial capacity of this country and you hollow out the future of our workers. You imperil the economic recovery from a once-in-100-years pandemic. It's for this reason that I felt it necessary that we move the second reading amendments. This bill has all the right headings but not enough substance, particularly in the area of reskilling and retraining as we recover from the pandemic.

Imagine how those 10½ thousand workers in my electorate feel today. Do they look at the coalition and think, 'There's a Prime Minister and a government that have got my back'? No, they don't. They're not hearing from this government, 'We'll get more training places so you can get back into the workforce.' They're not hearing from this government, 'We want you to grab those job vacancies that industry needs to fill.' All they're hearing from the Liberals is a plan to import skilled workers from overseas to do jobs that can and should be done by locals.

Don't get me wrong: a level of skilled immigration is an important component in our economic growth, and I welcome it. But it can't be the only answer. It's a pretty lazy answer, isn't it? We don't oppose the removal of the $350 per annum threshold that is contained within the bill, but what we do oppose is this government's abject failure to confront the skills crisis. The answer cannot just be, 'Let's import workers from overseas.' That's laziness and that is incompetence. This government is always making decisions for the short term and only ever making a decision after it's way too late. Nothing can crystallise the approach of this government more than that issue. When confronted with a crisis, they do nothing until it's absolutely too late—always looking for the silver bullet in the form of a marketing catchphrase, never prepared to do the hard yards, and always putting local workers, local industry and skills training last. I predict that, come the next election, Australians are going to hear a lot of the tired old lines of those opposite about cranes in the sky and getting workers back to work. Everybody wants to see that. But what you won't hear from the Liberals and the National Party is what they are going to do to train the workers in those cranes and on those building sites and the generation of workers who are going to be needed to repair or renovate your house. Prices are going to go up and up and up, and the opportunity for young Australians and older Australians who are seeking a second chance is going backwards because of this government's abject failure on skills, apprentices and training.

With those very brief comments, I will formally move the second reading amendment in my name, which has been circulated. I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes that the Government has:

(1) driven growth in insecure work, including through the gig economy, leaving Australians earning less and suffering worse conditions at work;

(2) failed to adequately combat multinational tax evasion and provide tax transparency;

(3) mishandled reforms to superannuation, leaving Australians in bad superannuation funds and damaging their retirement prospects; and

(4) done little to improve Australian workers' capacity to improve their skills".

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