Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It just doesn't matter where you are in Australia—whether you're in a major metropolitan city or a small regional town, every industry is struggling to find skilled and available workers. This is especially acute in the care sectors, with even more effects in smaller regional centres. Whether it's aged-care facilities desperate for workers, the local early education centre chasing new staff or NDIS providers trying to find skilled workers, there is a drastic skill shortage, which has been perpetuated by the former government, who sat on their hands and did little but make announcements rather than actually trying to fix it. Unlike the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments, the Albanese Labor government is committed to taking meaningful action to address the urgent skills crisis. We're already well underway when it comes to the hard work required to address the major issue. We permanently established Jobs and Skills Australia. We invested in fee-free TAFE and providing more places in universities.

The Trade Support Loans Amendment Bill 2023 continues this critical work by introducing measures to facilitate the expansion of the longstanding trade support loans program and make it fairer for more Australian apprentices. The amendments will make loans available to Australian apprentices in the priority non-trade sector for the first time, including female dominated apprenticeships. This is in clear contrast to the previous government, who had every opportunity and put up and left the barriers, keeping women out of the workforce or from advancing in their careers. The Albanese Labor government, in contrast, has been on the front foot since its election last year to tear down some of these barriers that affect women's participation in the workforce, whether it was by introducing the 10 days paid family and domestic violence leave, making child care cheaper or implementing our gender equality agenda for jobs and wages, including bringing transparency of pay to workplaces so that we know what goes on and measure it, and then we can improve.

These amendments and the widening of the availability of the trade support loans scheme will address the national skills shortage as well as getting more skilled women into the workforce. It's crucial that the expanded and fairer eligibility scheme in the amendments is in place to allow all apprentices in priority occupations to access additional support through this income-contingent loan. It's a scheme that helps them to meet their day-to-day living costs while they train. It also helps incentivise them to complete their training.

Trade support loans are an interest-free income-contingent government loan to support Australian apprentices to meet their everyday expenses while they undertake an apprenticeship. Eligible apprentices can access monthly loans up to a total of $22,890 over the life of their apprenticeship. Available loan amounts are tapered over the life of the apprenticeship, with levels of financial support front-loaded to the start of the apprenticeship in recognition of the low wages in the first few years. As at the end of March this year, more than 167,000 apprentices have taken up a trade support loan since the scheme was introduced in July 2014. That's a total of $1.5 billion paid in loan instalments to eligible apprentices.

These amendments seek to enhance access to income-contingent loans for apprentices and trainees under the Trade Support Loans Act 2014. These amendments will help more apprentices to meet their daily living costs as well as improve the administration of the scheme. I'll set out the amendments and what they'll do. They'll expand eligibility for the loans to include all Australian apprentices working in priority occupations, including those in non-trade occupations for the first time. This may include occupations in aged care, child care and disability care—three crucial areas in our economy. We'll rebrand the loan scheme from 'trade support loans' to 'Australian apprenticeship support loans' to reflect this expanded eligibility, and we'll improve flexibility to backdate trade support loan payments to provide immediate support to apprentices and avoid the potential for apprentices to miss a payment due to administrative error.

For many people, when you hear the word 'apprentice', your mind immediately turns to plumbers, sparkies, carpenters and such—what we sometimes call the traditional trades. However, we need to move away from thinking that apprenticeships are for traditional trades only. I'm not having a go at my sister the electrician, my nephews the carpenters or my nephew the plumber. It is 2023, and we need to realise help is required for people entering non-trade occupations such as aged care, child care and disability care. They deserve the same access to assistance as those typically male-dominated traditional trades. And how important are these jobs! These are the people who are caring for our children, our elderly and those with a disability—surely one of the most crucial things we can have someone do. So it is no surprise that many of these non-trade priority occupations are typically female dominated. As I said before, unlike the previous government, we support women in employment, and this change is expected to boost support for women's participation in those fields. This delivers access to additional financial assistance—no longer limited to trade occupations—and will provide ongoing flexibility for the program to support apprentices in industries when and where it is needed.

The priority list will replace the current trade support loans priority list to better align eligibility to occupations with an apprenticeship pathway in areas of identified current and future skills needs. The priority list will be kept current by continuing to be based on the latest Skills Priority List work, which has now become a part of the role of Jobs and Skills Australia. In updating the priority list, the minister will have the benefit of relying on the latest advice from Jobs and Skills Australia on Australia's current and emerging labour market and the skills most required.

These changes will mean that, amid rises in the cost of living, more people can access immediate financial support to help them complete apprenticeships or traineeships, leading to occupations in Australian workforce sectors that are currently experiencing skills shortages. This will help to address those shortages and deliver workers for a stronger Australian economy. The amendments align the trade support loan scheme with the Australian Apprenticeships Incentive System, which came into effect on 1 July last year.

This bill will also enable the backdating of payments to provide immediate support to apprentices where missed payments might have resulted from an admin error, as I mentioned earlier. Currently there is no discretion to provide backdated payments, so an apprentice who didn't receive a payment due to a simple admin error would just miss out. As anyone who knows apprenticeship wages, there's not much fat in the wages for an apprentice. This is not fair, and this bill will fix that problem.

In line with the existing trade support loan program, and to encourage completions, Australian apprentices who successfully complete their apprenticeship will continue to have access to a 20 per cent discount on the amount of the loan they need to repay. This incentive to complete the apprenticeship will continue under the more widely accessible Australian apprenticeships support loan scheme. It will encourage even more people to finish their apprenticeships. Sadly, for the past decade or so, they've been starting but not completing their apprenticeships. So all these reforms complement the establishment of Jobs and Skills Australia, which is the permanent, independent body responsible for providing advice to government to underpin our response to current, emerging and future labour market and workforce skills and training needs to improve employment opportunities and economic growth. This is important because, if you don't get that training right, productivity can be halted or can freeze.

Jobs and Skills Australia is a central part of our commitment to cement tripartism as the foundation for the VET system, driving a partnership approach to forecasting and planning for Australia's skills needs with governments, employers, unions and the training and education sector all working in the national interest. It's working closely with state and territory governments as well as employers, trade unions and training providers to ensure a shared understanding of the key issues facing Australia's labour market today and in the future.

Expanding eligibility for the new Australian apprenticeship support loans scheme will allow the government to leverage the expertise of Jobs and Skills Australia to identify those emerging skills needs and better target government assistance in a timely manner. Apprenticeships are the key to delivering the pipeline of skilled workers that Australia needs. However, we must lift that completion rate and increase diversity in our apprenticeship cohort to realise this skills pipeline.

These changes have seen consultation with both the Australian Taxation Office, who manage the loan repayments under the act, and the Australian Apprenticeship Support Network, our providers who support the delivery and administration of the apprenticeship support programs. Of course, this supplements all of the other work that the Albanese government is doing to meet the skills and labour shortages in Australia, including committing at the Jobs and Skills Summit to the reformation of the apprenticeship support system and committing, through the May budget, to a strengthened Australian apprenticeship support service delivery model that will place the apprentice right at the centre. It will rebalance non-financial supports over the life of an apprenticeship, strengthen wraparound supports and continue to build the skilled workforce that industry needs. These trade support loans amendments will complement our reform work and the Albanese government's focus on completions by providing another avenue of financial support to a broader range of apprentices and trainees. This will help more apprentices with cost-of-living pressures while they train.

Year-on-year completion rates have been in decline, and the apprenticeship system remains heavily gender biased, with women comprising only 31 per cent of all apprentices in training. I have a sister who is an electrician, and I remember when she was applying to be an apprentice that one of the old electricians said, 'You wouldn't be able to carry a large ladder across a ploughed field.' She said, 'Why would I want to carry a large ladder across a ploughed field? I'd drive it over in a ute.' She's now a brilliant electrician. So we know that there's some gender bias. In particular, women remain underrepresented in male dominated trades such as plumbing, carpentry and being electricians, where they make up just over eight per cent of all trade apprentices. It's also clear that current arrangements are not serving First Nations apprentices, whose overall completion rate is, on average, six per cent lower than other apprentices.

Despite there being a record number of trade apprentices currently in training, the proportion of apprentices completing their apprenticeship has been in steady decline since 2013. This is a trend we need to see improve, and these practical changes to financial support will deliver better outcomes for all industries and for the nation, both in traditional trades and in non-trade occupations. I commend the bill to the House.

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