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

by leave—On behalf of the member for Moncrieff, I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the Government misled the Australian Parliament and Australian people when they falsely claimed that since May 2022 there were 123,000 early childhood educators and teachers in the pipeline;

(b) the Department of Education advised Government Ministers time and again that it was factually incorrect to claim that figure was from May 2022;

(c) the 123,000 figure was actually from 2021 higher education and 2022 vocational education and training data, meaning the record figures were as a result of the previous Government's policies; and

(d) during the previous Government's time in office, record investments into skills and training were delivered which helped hundreds of thousands of Australians to skill-up and enter the workforce;

(2) calls on the:

(a) Government Ministers who misled the Australian Parliament to front-up and apologise; and

(b) Government to admit their claimed record in the training and education pipeline of educators was in fact thanks to the previous Government's strong training and skills policies.

Labor ministers have been deliberately using misleading data about Australia's childcare workforce, in media statements and in the parliament. When confronted, instead of accepting responsibility, they pathetically tried to blame Hansard for missing a dash.

For months this government has been saying that the 123,000 educators and childcare workers in the training pipeline are the result of Labor's policies since May 2022. Secret documents now reveal that the data actually only includes enrolments from 24 months of coalition government skills and education policies. It's not the result of Labor's fee-free TAFE policies at all. They have actually been highlighting the pipeline of successful training established under the coalition, including the Job Trainer program, which used both TAFE and industry led registered training organisations. What's worse is that the documents reveal they knew they were misleading Australians and the parliament, and they did that anyway.

The documents reveal official advice from the Department of Education was provided to the ministers as they developed a media release to highlight their childcare policies in October 2023. The advice explicitly warns the minister not to use the data in the way that they have been using it. Labor ministers have been taking the credit for coalition enrolments and trying to pass it off as the result of their policies. Several Labor ministers are caught up in this deception, and at least two, Minister Aly and Minister Watt, have clearly misled the parliament. Today I call on Minister Aly and Minister Watt to come into the parliament and correct their statements. There are clear rules that should be enforced about misleading the parliament, and I ask that these ministers follow them.

I understand why Labor ministers want to use data from coalition government skills and education policies. We handed the Albanese government a skills and training system not just trending up but powering ahead on the back of record investments guaranteed by a strong economy. Our policies invested over $13 billion in skills over the past two years of our government alone. We didn't just clean up Labor's mess; we made the most significant reforms to Aussie skills in over a decade. Our policy settings got apprenticeship numbers up to record levels. We did all of this while saving a generation of Australian workers from the biggest hit to our workforce since the Great Depression.

I will remind the chamber of the record of the Labor Party. When last in government, everything they touched on skills went bad. Apprenticeship numbers took a nosedive. When Labor last left office, apprentice and trainee numbers were in freefall, with the number in training collapsing by 22 per cent. Labor's VET FEE-HELP disaster saw the reputation of the Australian skills system hit rock bottom, as tens of thousands of Australians were loaded up with debt for doing courses that would never land them a job.

The scheme established by the Labor government in 2008 and expanded in 2012 was plagued by systemwide rorting, with some training providers exploiting loose rules and charging students substantial debts for training they never undertook or benefited from. It also targeted people with disabilities and substance abuse issues, public housing residents, those from non-English-speaking backgrounds and others with offers of free laptops and other incentives, and the taxpayer is still picking up the tab for this enormous public policy failure, which is now over $3.5 billion. Who presided over all of this? It was none other than the now-returned Minister for Skills and Training, the member for Gorton.

We've also discovered that new data from NCVER demonstrates that Labor are at it again, with the Albanese government overseeing a wholesale collapse in the number of apprentices and trainees in every single state and almost every electorate across the nation. After just one year of Labor, there are 50,000 fewer apprentices and trainees in training today than when Labor took office. That is a loss of one in 10. The data, which has also been broken down by electorate, shows that, in the final year of the coalition government, in-training numbers increased in every electorate bar one while, under the first year of Labor's skills policies, the number of apprentices and trainees dropped in every electorate except four. I see that the member for Robertson may be speaking on this motion. His electorate on the Central Coast has taken a six per cent hit to apprentices and trainees in one year of Labor. In the final year of the Liberal government, numbers went up 24 per cent. The member for Chisholm may be speaking on this motion. Her electorate in Melbourne is one of the worst hit. In just one year of Labor, Chisholm lost one in five apprentices and trainees. During the last year under the Liberal government, numbers went up 70 per cent.

Labor came to power promising it would solve the skills shortages, but in fact this government has misled the parliament and the Australian people with factually incorrect information, and skills and training, which are so important for our economy, are sliding backwards.

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