Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to rise today to speak on the Free TAFE Bill 2024. I believe that the 508,000 Australians who have registered across the last two years for fee-free TAFE have got it right. They've signed up to get some skills, to be trained, to take on the jobs that this country needs. Our young people and people looking for work and people looking to retrain—we need them to take up positions where we have shortages, and 500,000 people have done that. This bill is the Labor government's commitment to ensuring that 100,000 fee-free TAFE places will go on, starting in 2027.

Those opposite, in an unfathomable move, have chosen to vote against something that is about fixing a skills shortage. Let's just think about where the skills shortage is. We know that it is in early education and child care. We know that it is in aged care. We know that it is in the feminised work industries. So there has to be a missing piece, because they all want to get up and talk about tradies, but none of them actually talk about the care economy and our need for a trained, skilled workforce there. A lot of that is what is driving this, because we know where the shortages are and we know we want to address them.

There is a lot of narrative coming from those opposite round completion rates. As I've heard the minister say several times in the last week, the Victorian experience of fee-free TAFE, which is where free TAFE has been going on longest in the country and where we have something that is measurable and reportable, shows a completion rate of 54 per cent. That is higher than the university completion rate and higher than the general VET completion rate, whether that be in TAFE or in a private provider setting. That might be a shock to Australians—that people sign up to study something and do not finish it—but the fact is in fee-free TAFE the completion rate is higher. I will say it again: the fee-free TAFE completion rate is higher than university and higher than general VET training courses. Those opposite are choosing not to hear the minister when he says that.

Why would we be surprised? The Deputy Leader of the Opposition, a former minister for skills, this week said:

… remember this, and it's a key principle … of the Liberal Party: if you don't pay for something, you don't value it.

Well, I have the reverse view: if you don't pay for something, it has nothing to do with its value. And education is always an investment. Those opposite only see education as a cost. On this side of the House we see educating our population as a clear investment in the future.

If the skills shortage can teach you anything, it is that governments need to plan for and ensure that they have the structures in place to ensure that Australia has the skilled workforces that we need in the areas that we need them, and that is what this bill is all about. I absolutely wholeheartedly support the Free TAFE Bill and support this government's absolute intent to ensure that we address the skills shortage, particularly in the care economy—and that we pay the workers in the care economy what they're worth.

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