Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very happy to rise and speak on this bill, the Free TAFE Bill 2024. I start by commending the Minister for Skills and Training for incorporating for the future an investment in education and training in this country. There's no doubt that when we came to office just over 2½ years ago we were confronted with one of the worst skills shortages in this country's history. For 50 years we have not had such a great paucity of skills in so many sectors of our economy. For that reason the Prime Minister made the right decision to call together constituent parts of the economy, including representatives of employers, businesses, workers, universities, the VET sector—including TAFEs—and civil society, in order to confront the major challenges we have in our economy. One of the major challenges we've had to date and for the period we've been in government has been to deal with these skills shortages across the economy.

Arising out of that summit, the first decision was made by the Albanese government and the state and territory governments to commit to 180,000 fee-free TAFE places for the first 12 months, if you like.

We reached the target well before time, and we did so in order to ensure that people across this nation, whether they're in cities, regional towns or smaller communities, were able to access training and education in areas of current and future demand. The reason they were picked up so quickly was that people were really in need of those skills—not only the students acquiring the skills but the businesses that are crying out for a skilled workforce, and, at large, our economy. Out of the success of those early days, we continue to invest and continue to partner with eight other governments, six state and two territory governments, working together. I believe that there are very strong signs of success.

I want to disabuse this place of the proposition put by those opposite that this has not been a successful initiative from the commencement, because the reality is that the completion rates of fee-free TAFE—and that data will continue to flow through from providers to state and territory governments to the Commonwealth—are in most circumstances higher than the completion rates of university degrees and other VET sector courses. That's the first thing that should be said, because there's a lot of misinformation being put forward by those opposite, who do not have a clue when it comes to dealing with TAFE. We know the only time that they consider TAFE is when it's about how they can rip as much money as they can from those remarkable public providers. That's the history of the coalition when it comes to looking after TAFE colleges throughout this country, unfortunately.

I'm most surprised that the member for Dawson, the preceding speaker, who represents a community that absolutely requires access to education and training, including in the VET sector, would think it was a nonsense to provide opportunities for his constituents. You think about this. There are more than half a million Australians enrolled in fee-free TAFE. That means approximately 3,000 to 4,000 people in each and every electorate of this country—because the other thing about the data, when you look at access to free TAFE courses, is that you see there has been a real effort to ensure that this is an investment across Australia. Just over a third of the places, for example, are in regional Australia, as they should be. Over 50 per cent, closer to 60 per cent, are for women, and that's largely because of the demand in sectors of the economy where there are more women working and more opportunities in education and the care economy.

The nonsense put forward by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the shadow minister, and those who read her notes and have been pretty much parroting it since the debate started in this place, is shown to be completely wrong when you look at the facts. This is a successful scheme. It's been taken up by half a million Australians or more, and it's been popular throughout the country, in city and regional areas, and I think it will continue to be successful.

The reason I think it will be successful is that we are in dire need of this investment. This is not just to support students and young workers in acquiring skills. This is for businesses that are crying out for the skills that they need. This is for our economy because, as the minister has said, and I said before him, we are suffering the worst skills shortage in half a century and we need to do better.

This bill also is in the context of a lot of reforms outlined by the Albanese government in relation to the VET sector. Frankly, I think federal governments, even Labor governments of the past, could have done better in the VET sector, looking back. Hindsight's obviously an easy perspective. But the reality is that this government, the Albanese government, has put the VET sector on an equal footing with the university sector in a way that no preceding federal government has done, or at least not for decades. We've done that by lifting the status of the VET sector, including the very important role that public providers play in this very critical tertiary sector in our country. I'm very proud that we've managed to do that. We've elevated the sector, designating a minister responsible for the sector—working closely, of course, with the minister responsible for universities, but working primarily to ensure the VET sector is successful. And why are we looking to do that? Because the VET sector provides nearly half the skills to our labour market.

Historically, the Commonwealth has too often acted as a funding body rather than as a strategic partner with state and territory governments. The National Skills Agreement, a five-year agreement with $30 billion of financial certainty for the sector, was a landmark agreement and one that had not been reached for a decade. In the previous nine years, the previous government failed to reach any agreement with state and territory governments on the VET sector, and that was to the detriment of not only the sector but the people looking to acquire skills and the businesses who wanted to ensure that their skill vacancies could be filled.

This is about ensuring, firstly, that we work as strategic partners with state and territory governments and, secondly, that we work closer with industry so that we are in touch with the changing nature of the labour market and our economy and making sure that we are investing in areas of demand—not just for today but for tomorrow. There is a time lag between what is needed now and what is needed after the acquisition of skills and knowledge. We have to anticipate more precisely what our economy needs in three years time and in five years time so that when we look to invest in education and training, whether it be universities or the VET sector, we do so with an understanding of what our economy, labour market and businesses demand. And I think we will do that better with the creation of Jobs and Skills Australia.

Jobs and Skills Australia is about anticipating more precisely the needs of our labour market today and tomorrow. It is complemented by jobs and skills councils, through which we are making sure we have real economic insight into the data analysed by Jobs and Skills Australia. That combination of data collection and analysis of the labour market and real economic insight by economic players in different sectors of our economy will bring about much better intelligence for governments—and for industry—to make decisions around investing in education and training for this country. And that's what we're seeing under this government.

It was not a coincidence that this government chose to introduce the Jobs and Skills Australia legislation as the first bill of this parliamentary term. I want to pay tribute to the Prime Minister. It was a signature policy of his. He saw it as being akin to Infrastructure Australia—what we did with capital investment we could do with human capital. I think that has been a great success to date. There's a long way to go, but I'm certainly confident that that will continue to work in the interests of the Australian people, our economy and, indeed, workers and businesses. This is all working in combination. Setting up an arrangement where the best intelligence informs our funding in education and training, whether it be universities or the VET sector, is critical so we don't waste taxpayers' money.

The other thing I want to knock on the head is the idea that we don't invest in non-TAFE providers. There is an enormous amount of investment in them. Billions and billions of dollars are invested in non-public providers in the VET sector by the Commonwealth and by state and territory governments. We do believe that TAFE should sit at the heart of the VET sector, but we accept that there are industry providers and other specialist providers who really do provide great education and training.

Our major concern as a government is that we want to get rid of the shonks. We want to get rid of the bottom feeders. We want to get rid of the ones who'd like to spend more time turning up to campaign fundraisers for politicians than actually delivering skills to their students. That's why we provided powers to the regulatory body, ASQA—and to the minister—to make sure that, if we find that people are being exploited or that students are not getting the standard of education and training that they deserve, we are able to rid our sector of those providers. We will do so in the interests of not only the students but the taxpayers of Australia, who fund some of these providers, and the businesses who need qualified staff, not those with phony qualifications from dodgy providers.

I'm very proud of the fact that in my time in the skills portfolio we were very much focused on removing low-quality and subquality providers, which in some cases were criminal in the way in which they defrauded students who were apparently enrolled in training courses that weren't actually operating. We need to clean up the sector. We need to lift it, to elevate it, and to put TAFE back at the centre.

That's all happening under this government and I think this bill is a manifestation of that ongoing reform.

This bill also provides an opportunity for the people of Australia to understand how little the opposition cares about education training in this country. Every speaker on the other side is getting up and trashing TAFE and attacking students who get support at a time of acute cost-of-living pressures. They don't want us to provide support at a time when people are struggling to make ends meet in some situations. They don't want us to remove cost barriers to education and training, yet during the pandemic they were willing to provide Harvey Norman, who was in receipt of record profits, millions and millions of dollars of taxpayer funding. And they don't want to provide a worker or a student in the electorate of Dawson an opportunity to acquire skills so that person can be gainfully employed. That is the hypocrisy here.

It's not that they don't like taxpayers' money being spent; they just don't want taxpayers' money spent on ordinary Australians. They want it to be given to companies who are making record profits during a pandemic. That's how faulty the JobKeeper design was. We supported JobKeeper, but we did not support excessive money going to companies that were making record profits. That was a waste of taxpayers' money. But apparently, according to the opposition, wasteful spending includes funding TAFE courses in order to remove cost barriers for students to acquire skills in areas of demand.

I've heard those opposite say that this does not cover all courses; well, it doesn't. The design of this program is focused on those areas which are in acute demand in our economy. We make no apologies about investing in areas which are an existing and future demand of our labour market, our businesses and those workers who need those skills. That is a good design policy. Maybe they should have thought of that sort of design when they were creating JobKeeper and not providing it to companies that were making more money during the pandemic rather than less.

We have focused on those areas of demand, so we know that if you acquire those skills your chances of employment are much greater. It means that those businesses crying out for skills are more likely to find a prospective employee as a result of the acquisition of those skills. This is a perfectly designed policy to assist in investing in education training, because we do believe there's a causal link between how knowledgeable and how innovative our labour market is and the wellbeing of Australia.

We understand that in a knowledge based, globalised economy the countries with the smartest, most knowledgeable and most skilled labour markets will be the winners in the 21st century. It seems to be lost on those opposite that investing in education training is not just good for the recipients who acquire that knowledge and those skills but also good for their families, for business, for our economy and for our society.

For all the reasons that I've outlined, and for the many more that the minister and other members on this side have added to this debate, I would ask those opposite to think again and to support this legislation. It's really important for students and it's really important for workers. It's important for businesses and, as I said, it's important for our national economy.

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