Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Skills and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Robertson for his question and strong advocacy for the VET sector in his electorate and beyond. It has been an important week for the VET sector. We've ensured compacts for five years providing strategic funding certainty for the sector that needs to supply skills to our economy. Of course, this also outlines the significant reforms that need to be undertaken so that the VET sector is fit for purpose. I'd like to repeat my appreciation for state and territory governments for their collaborative approach and really for returning to the table after a decade of neglect by those opposite. In doing so, I share with the House the responses to the announcement by the state ministers.

The New South Wales minister for skills, Steve Whan, hailed the agreement as a 'united commitment' to 'train key workers in priority industries and build a robust and scalable skills force'. My Victorian counterpart, Gayle Tierney, put it well when she said:

It is particularly pleasing to see the Federal Government's strong commitment to TAFE … which includes working with the states on the establishment of nationally networked TAFE Centres of Excellence involving partnerships between TAFEs, Jobs and Skills Councils and industry.

The minister for skills in Queensland, Di Farmer, said she was thankful to the Albanese government for recognising the unique training needs of a 'diverse and decentralised state'. The South Australian Premier, Peter Malinauskas, declared this 'the most significant investment in skills in South Australia that has ever been seen,' and he went on to say:

We are building our workforce and our economy in a way that has never been done before …

The WA minister, Simone McGurk, said:

After years of interim agreements—the Cook and Albanese Governments achieved something others could not—securing a long-term NSA giving certainty to the VET sector, which is critical for providing skills to grow the economy.

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr, who, of course, I'm pleased to say accompanied the Prime Minister, the member for Canberra and I to the announcement in Canberra this week, said:

This is a landmark agreement, one that wasn't easy to arrive at, but there was a willingness from the federal government to work with the states and territories, and that is what was absent over the previous decade …

The Chief Minister, of course, was right. This is the first national skills agreement in a decade, after a decade of neglect from those opposite. They were a complete failure. It wasn't that they couldn't get a national skills agreement; they couldn't get an agreement with any state or any territory in the last government. That's how bad they were and that's why we've had to work together. I will be meeting with my counterpart ministers in Hobart on 17 November so we implement this agreement, because that's what good governments do.

See this speech in context