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

In that contribution, the member for Sturt provided unsolicited advice to the government. As I understood what he said, he said, 'If this government doesn't take this issue of skills shortages seriously and come up with solutions, the government will be in real trouble.' I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the member for Sturt for sharing his real-life lived experience with the chamber and the government. Of course, that's what happened to the previous government. We can't pretend in this chamber that the skills shortages have arisen from nowhere in the last 100 days. I appreciate the member for Sturt sharing that real-life lived experience of what happens to a government that doesn't take skills shortages and workforce planning seriously. I can assure the member for Sturt that many of his questions about Jobs and Skills Australia, which is established under this bill, the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill 2022, would be answered if he read the provisions of the bill. If he still doesn't understand the purpose of this legislation and the institution being established, I am sure the minister's office would be more than happy to give him a briefing on it.

We know that, as a nation, we are absolutely experiencing skills shortages across a range of industries—industries that are important to our economic growth, industries that are important to the functioning of communities, industries that are essential to the health and wellbeing of Australians. It defies logic to suggest that these skills shortages have arisen in the last 100 days. Whilst there were issues during the pandemic lockdown that have contributed to the skills and worker shortages in this country—including the decision to abandon migrant workers and tell them they can leave the country—it is also not the case that it is the last three years alone which has led to the rise of skills and skilled worker shortages in Australia. The truth is there has been a decade of a lack of workforce planning in critical industries across this country, not least of which are health industries.

What was revealed, not caused by but exacerbated by and revealed by the pandemic, was the absolute absence of proper workforce planning for nurses, GPs and other health practitioners, who are crucial to the health and wellbeing of communities like my community in Dunkley. Nurses who carried this community through the pandemic, who worked in hospitals in back-to-back shifts until many of them could hardly even stand up, who are still exhausted and still dealing with COVID waves, COVID patients and a backlog of patients who haven't had other health issues treated, will tell you there has been a lack of planning for their profession. There has been a lack of looking at initiatives like how to get more nurse practitioners into the system so they can look after people with chronic illnesses, like people living with cancer, to take some of the burden off the GPs and to provide good health for people who need it.

In my community, like many other communities, we are also looking at skills shortages in areas which, quite frankly, defy belief. In the last term of parliament, under the previous government, which members of the opposition have crowed about—of its success, apparently, in helping skill up Australians and provide workers—I had hundreds of businesses contact me about skills shortages but I had two different businesses in Carrum Downs contact me, in desperate straits, about not being able to find workers. There is a stair manufacturer in Carrum Downs who went from having more than 200 job applications for vacancies in about 2018 to only having five per month over a two-month span, with 50 per cent of applicants not turning up for interviews. They needed people to do welding, to make staircases, and they couldn't find enough welders to get work completed—facing the possibility of needing to close after 25 years of being a family business in my community that employs locals.

There was another engineering business in Carrum Downs that sent me an email saying, 'We run an engineering business and we're having an awful time trying to get tradespeople or even apprentices to interview. What is happening to our education system? We are struggling to get anybody through the door, let alone working for us.' They noted that I'd sent them a sticker about supporting 'Australian made' because I ran a campaign, last term, about supporting Australian made and buying Australian. But they made this point: 'If there are no workers available, how are we to have this happen and what are we to do?' They ended their email by saying, 'The youth of Australia need options in education for apprenticeships, and with many trades needing staff something needs to change.'

What I can now say to these two businesses and many others in my community, and many of the exhausted nurses who just say, 'We need more nurses in the system,' and many of the businesses that run retail and hospitality, is that you now have a government that genuinely understands that we need to plan for the workforces that we need now and into the future. We need to invest in the opportunities for our people to get those skills so that Australians can be skilled up for the jobs that exist now and into the future. We don't have to solely rely on temporary migration, like happened under the previous government.

In February of this year, before the federal election, 17 per cent of businesses reported that they didn't have enough employees, and the recruitment difficulty rate for higher skilled occupations was sitting at 67 per cent. Whilst we have high job vacancies and a low official employment rate in this country, those of us who are in touch with our communities know that there are a large cohort of people who aren't working and want to work but have either been unemployed for so long that they've left the labour market or find it so difficult—because they don't have the skills that are needed—to get the jobs that are available that they've left the labour market or are facing other barriers.

What these people need is a government that's willing to give them the assistance they need to get back into the labour market, to get the skills that they need. That's why this government is committed to TAFE, and to public TAFE. Today, on National TAFE Day, it is appropriate to emphasise, yet again, the important role that TAFE plays in education and skilling up Australians of all ages and from all backgrounds. But enough has not been done to support the TAFE system. In fact, it's been allowed to significantly erode. And the workforce of the TAFE system—the trainers and the teachers and the educators—have not been supported enough to be able to provide that great training and education.

Out of the Jobs and Skills Summit held last week, and the national cabinet meeting that was held immediately before it, we started a new era of Commonwealth and state cooperation on skills and training where TAFE is at the heart. There is a commitment to a billion dollars, co-funded, for the national skills agreement to deliver 180,000 fee-free TAFE places in 2023. And that is a great start.

I come from the state of Victoria, where we have a state government that has also been providing fee-free TAFE places. Every time I visit Chisholm Institute in my electorate, which is a magnificent TAFE, I talk to students who tell me how their opportunities have been transformed because they've been able to enrol in a fee-free TAFE place, and they wouldn't have been able to study without it. There are young people studying to be enrolled nurses and older people who are already working in the aged-care system as carers studying to become enrolled nurses to increase their career opportunities. There are people studying to be social workers, drug and alcohol rehabilitation workers, carpenters, welders, plumbers or car mechanics, who have this opportunity because of fee-free TAFE. What Jobs and Skills Australia will do is make sure that these fee-free TAFE places provided by the federal and state governments are targeted towards skills shortage areas.

You have to have a government that is willing not just to make announcements but also to do the hard work in the background—the planning of how these announcements are best directed and best delivered. And that's why this legislation is part of a package and a commencement of a government that has a strategy to deal with the skills shortage in Australia. It is not just an ad hoc, one-off piece of legislation. We have commitments to ensure that at least 70 per cent of Commonwealth VET funding is for public TAFE; to establish a TAFE Technology Fund; to have a Future Made In Australia Skills Plan; and to have new energy apprenticeships.

It's so important to encourage Australians to train in the new energy jobs of the future. It's so important to provide additional support so they can complete their training. This government will provide $100 million to support 10,000 new energy apprenticeships through our New Energy Skills Program and to develop fit-for-purpose training pathways for new energy industry jobs. It will do so in the spirit that the Albanese Labor government wants to govern in: in partnership with the states and territories, industries and unions. We have a commitment and a plan to deliver a reduction in emissions of at least 43 per cent by 2030 and to do so by giving Australia the opportunity to become the renewable energy superpower that we know that we can and should be.

That commitment, again, feeds into a strategy to make sure Australians are skilled and able to take on the jobs of the future—the smart, well-paid, secure jobs that will come from the development of the renewable energy industry. They're the sorts of jobs that people in my community desperately want for themselves and for their children. It's why there is a sense of optimism and hope that the future will be better—that we will be able to provide a better future for our children—because we have a government that is committed to a strategy to make that happen. I commend this bill to the House.

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