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

It gives me great pleasure to talk about this budget, in the parliament, because, in many ways, it reflects the priorities not just of the government, of Labor, but of the priorities of the country, both now and into the future. One of the things that has always made me want to be a member of the Labor Party and part of a Labor government is a deep-seated and immovable conviction that the way to attack inequality, the way to make sure that people have opportunity, the way to a better and a fairer society, is education. It's why I've spoken so many times in this parliament about public school education and access to what should be gold standard education in the public school system, no matter where a student lives or what their background is.

Education is what gave me and my sisters—we grew up in a country town in New South Wales—the opportunities to do further study, tertiary education, have professional careers and, for me, to ultimately be here. That's public school education. It was also due to the fact that there was a system which gave us an opportunity to pursue the careers we wanted. For me and my sisters, that was university. But that's not the only thing available to students after school, and, perhaps for too long, we've forgotten to talk about options other than university, particularly the options available at TAFE.

When we look at the skills shortages that exist in many of the sectors of our economy today, we can reflect on the fact that for the last 10 years government—and perhaps governments before that—did not put enough emphasis on getting students through a school system and into a post-school skills, training and education system that meant they were equipped for the jobs that we need in Australia. We're talking predominantly about jobs in the care economy, aged care, early childhood education and, amazingly, health. If the pandemic showed us one thing about the healthcare system it showed the absolute lack of workforce planning that had gone on in this country. How a country like Australia cannot have enough nurses or GPs is extraordinary.

It's exciting to see the Albanese government and the Minister for Skills and Training and be part of a government that says, 'Let's do two things. Let's make sure that young people and not so young people in this country have the opportunity to get the education and the skills and the training that they need for their lives to be secure, healthy and happy because they have employment and a steady income. Let's also make sure that the skills and the training and the education they're getting fits the skills shortages and the needs of this country, particularly in the areas where we care for people at the start of their lives and at the end of their lives so that those people can be secure and healthy and happy.' There are a number of ways that this government is doing it, but this budget makes it clear that there's a commitment to TAFE, including public TAFE. That's why I start by saying it's very much a budget that is not just a Labor priority but a priority for the community.

We know that the Jobs and Skills Summit, convened very early in the term of this government, brought together people from all over the country and from different industries and backgrounds and led to a billion-dollar one-year national skills agreement to provide additional funding for fee-free TAFE in 2023 and, of course, to a longer-term agreement to drive sector reform and to support women's workforce participation. With that, we have a government determined to accelerate the delivery of over 465,000 additional fee-free TAFE places.

In Victoria, we're kind of used to fee-free TAFE because we have a progressive state government that introduced it a while ago, but, nonetheless, now having a federal government that is part of that means that it has been possible for the focus of fee-free TAFE to be expanded. More than $250 million going into the Victorian skills and training sector to support more than 55,000 fee-free TAFE and vocational education and training places in 2023 is what is in this budget.

In my electorate alone, Dunkley, we have 2,115 apprentices. There are a lot of tradies in Dunkley. One can't walk down the street without tripping over a tradie. There are also a lot of hairdressers and beauticians who are also doing apprenticeships. So TAFE and apprenticeships are really important to my community, so a $54.3 million investment in critical Australian apprenticeship supports in this budget means a lot to my community. Many of the 55,000 additional fee-free places across Victoria will be delivered through the wonderful Chisholm Institute of TAFE, which is getting better and better in Victoria, predominantly through state government investment in its infrastructure. It has pride of place in Frankston and is going to deliver many of them.

We know that fee-free TAFE helps young people to find secure, better paid and more meaningful work, and, as I said, we know it will help to fill skills shortages. It doesn't seem like rocket science, but it hasn't been done for the last decade, and it's so important. The Chisholm Institute of TAFE campus in Frankston delivers aged-care courses and enrolled nursing courses and is already delivering fee-free places there. I've spoken to a number of the students there, who are so excited at the opportunity to get that education and to get out into a nursing career. Some of them had already planned to become registered nurses and do further study afterwards, but many, particularly the young women, said to me that, if it weren't for fee-free TAFE, they wouldn't have been able to take up that opportunity because they just don't have the money or the family and other supports that other sectors of the community have. The fee-free TAFE courses have made the world of difference to them and are going to make the world of difference to people in aged care facilities who are going to be cared for 24/7, because of the Labor government, by nurses who have chosen this profession because that's what they want to do.

There are sections of my community where the socioeconomic barriers to employment are really high and have been so for generations—so high that for some people they seem to be insurmountable. Again, fee-free TAFE brings those barriers down and means that people who are struggling to afford rent, food and often child care don't have to sacrifice their own education and training to pay for those things, because they don't have to pay for their TAFE course. It also means that a generation of young people in some of the most disadvantaged areas of my community can go to TAFE as the first people in their families to ever do so. They can be part of the change that they want to see for their families, their communities and themselves. That is worth more to the broader community but also to those young people than can be described.

One of the really exciting things that have come out recently about the uptake of fee-free TAFE places is that, in the courses that have already been delivered, 60 per cent of enrolments were women. That is so empowering. It goes to closing the gender pay gap. We know women are working predominantly in the care economy, although I suspect that when those wages go up we will see some men start to work in the care economy, which will be good for the men and, hopefully, help women to keep their wages going up.

It closes the gender pay gap and it helps to change the traditional gender stereotypes of the roles of men and women. In some pockets of my community these are quite hard to shift. They have held women back and in many cases they have held men back, because they don't get the opportunity to do some of the things with family and children that will enrich their lives.

And it gives many women some financial independence and some security within themselves that they wouldn't have had otherwise. Again this is something that is almost hard to quantify and explain but is so important for any adult, but particularly for a woman in a community or a family where women haven't had employment or economic security and independence from men before. So it will make a huge difference.

It builds on a number of the other measures that are in this budget and that the government has introduced that go towards helping women in the workplace and women's economic independence. The 15 per cent increase in wages for aged-care workers is just extraordinary in terms of the difference it will make. I was in the high-dependency unit at Baxter retirement village with Minister Kearney two weeks ago and the residents were telling us how wonderful they thought it was that their carers were getting pay rises. One of the women, who had recently turned 90, said to me: 'I couldn't look after myself. They deserve a pay rise for looking after me.' I thought that was a pretty great way of explaining it.

Obviously the workers were delighted because it makes such a difference to their lives. The people who run Baxter village were really happy that their staff were getting a pay rise, because they understand what it means to the quality of care and the quality of workers. It will encourage more people to get into that workforce, which is struggling with shortages.

We know that many single parents are women. We have a young parents program in Dunkley. It is federally funded. At the moment it is run out of Chisholm TAFE. It helps young mums who are teenagers to finish school, to finish their VCE. They are young women aged between about 16 and 22 with one or more children. They have made the decision to go back and get their education for their own good and for their children's good. They are doing all they can to get that education in really difficult circumstances.

The increase to the single parent pension is also going to make a world of difference to young women like that and to older women who have had to leave a relationship for a variety of reasons. Often for reasons of coercive control or domestic violence they have had to flee a relationship. If a relationship has broken down, they can find themselves on their own having to look after a young child and get through. That increase in the single parent pension is really important.

The increase to the Commonwealth rent assistance, which we often talk about in the context of young people and young people who are studying, is going to be really important to a significant number of women, single parents and older women over the age of 55, who we know are the fastest-growing cohort of people who are homeless. They find it very hard to buy a new home once a relationship has broken down or to stay in rental housing, so an increase in rent assistance—the highest in many decades—is going to make a big difference to their lives.

The Australian Skills Guarantee, to go back to where I started, about skills and training—the national targets for women in apprenticeships, traineeships and cadetships are major government projects. They are great for women's employment. It is great to change that gendered stereotype of the type of work that women can and should be doing, and to give women opportunities. And, of course, there is $72.4 million for the building and retaining of the early childhood education care workforce, of whom 92 per cent are women.

These are the types of investments in education, skills, training and the workforce that set people up now and into the future, and set our country and our economy up now and into the future. That is what Labor governments are all about.

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