Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

As we know, nothing is free in this world. Sadly the government seems to think that, if you call something free, that somehow that makes it free.

But that goes to the fact that this government knows nothing about how to manage money and in particular knows nothing about how to manage government spending in a cost-of-living crisis. If you cannot deal with the No. 1 priority facing this nation at the moment—which is that we are facing a cost-of-living crisis due to the fact that this government cannot get its spending under control—then, sadly, you are failing the Australian people.

At the moment the Australian people are seeing their gas bills going up, their electricity bills going up and their rents going up, and when they go to the supermarket their grocery bills continue to go up and up and up. Yet from this government we're seeing scant recognition that people are facing a cost-of-living crisis. If the government keeps spending, we will see inflation continuing to be way above that of nearly every one of our major OECD partners and our major G21 partners. That will mean that interest rates will stay higher for longer. And what does that mean? It means, sadly, that people's cost of living will continue to rise.

There's this serious question that needs to be answered now, and the government should think about this every single day: when they look the Australian people in the eye, can they say that the Australian people are better off today than they were when the Albanese Labor government was elected? No, they cannot. That is a damning indictment on this government. It's a damning indictment on the failure of this government to deal with inflation, to deal with the cost-of-living crisis that is facing everyone.

All of us understand the need to deal with skills and education in this nation, and it's incredibly important that we can develop the skills that we need locally so we can address skill shortages. Our deputy leader and shadow minister has articulated this magnificently. That is what we as a nation need to do. In particular, we've got to make sure that, when it comes to undertaking apprenticeships and vocational education, people not only sign up but also complete their courses. It's all very well encouraging people and to say 'TAFE's free'—although we know it's actually the taxpayer who's paying for it—and to say, 'We want you to join up.' But if people just join up for the sake of it and then don't complete it, and when you've got a minister who used to be an immigration minister and made a complete mess of that and potentially is just going to do exactly same in this space—a minister who doesn't have the wherewithal to know that it's not just about people getting in the front door but about the learning, being educated and being able to address the skills shortages that we face—then this idea of fee-free TAFE, where it is the taxpayer who pays, won't achieve anything.

I know that the shadow minister has a lot more to say on this, so I will leave it there and enable the shadow minister to continue on. It is incredibly important that the new minister, the failed immigration minister, does not make a complete mess of this. But the sad reality is that I think we're on the path to that, because my hell he left a mess in immigration! And I don't think this government is going to be able to clean it up; I think it's going to require a change of government to do that. But I'll allow the shadow minister to continue while I've still got some time left.

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