Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Trade Support Loans Amendment Bill 2023 and the Student Loans (Overseas Debtors Repayment Levy) Amendment Bill 2023. The coalition will be supporting these bills. These are sensible reforms which the coalition developed whilst in government.

The Trade Support Loans Amendment Bill causes the Trade Support Loans Priority List to lapse; amends the act to empower the minister by legislative instrument to determine, having had regard to any relevant advice given to the minister by Jobs and Skills Australia, a new Australian Apprenticeships Priority List; and amends the act to provide that a qualifying apprenticeship is, among other things, an apprenticeship through which a person is undertaking a qualification that leads to an occupation or qualification specified on the Australian Apprenticeships Priority List. These changes will mean the skills minister can expand the program's access to people who, through their apprenticeship or traineeship, are undertaking qualifications that lead to occupations experiencing skills shortages, such as occupations in the aged-care, disability care and childcare sectors.

We know that apprentices and trainees are doing it tough right now. The price of their groceries, their fuel and their electricity are all going up, but their wages aren't. Enabling more students to access this support will be critical to more apprentices completing their studies. The Student Loans (Overseas Debtors Repayment Levy) Amendment Bill 2023 updates references in the Student Loans (Overseas Debtors Repayment Levy) Act 2015 to 'Trade Support Loans Act 2014' with 'Australian Apprenticeship Support Loans Act 2014' to align with the rebranding of trade support loans to Australian apprenticeship support loans. As I stated, these are sensible reforms which improve the scheme. The coalition began the scheme and started these reforms. We will see them through.

Some stakeholders, however, have raised concerns about the consultation process which the minister's office conducted with regard to the bill. However, they remained broadly supportive of the passage of the legislation. Stakeholders noted that the minister's office did no external consultation whatsoever. Indeed, the government's explanatory memorandum seems to admit that they did no further consultation and have broadly accepted the coalition's reforms without amendment. I'm grateful for the government's acknowledgement that our skills policies were working. The government must think so, considering that they've taken our policy and decided it was so good that no further consultation is necessary. They were able to do that because of our extraordinary work in the skills and VET space.

The coalition committed more than $13 billion to the skills sector, including a record $7.8 billion in our final financial year in office. We protected more than 530,000 apprentices and trainees through our wage subsidies announced since the pandemic hit, with total pandemic apprentice wage subsidy support reaching more than $7.9 billion. Most importantly, we delivered a record 240,000 trade apprentices in training, the highest since 1963. That is a strong record to stand on, as Labor seems to be doing, and we will support them when they bring forward good policy such as this. I thank the House.

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