Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Free TAFE Bill 2024. Vocational qualifications are an important part of the post-secondary education mix. However, completions of apprenticeships and traineeships have been in decline since hitting peaks in 2012 to 2014. This deeply concerns me. This decline did not occur in a vacuum.

In July 2012, commencement incentives for existing worker apprenticeships and traineeships not on the National Skills Needs List were introduced. In October 2012, additional commencement and completion incentives were removed—$4,000 for diplomas and advanced diplomas, except for aged care, child care and enrolled nursing, and $1,500 for part-time apprenticeships and traineeships. With these few examples, we're demonstrating that there's a direct correlation between vocational education and the incentives and participation. Quite simply, policy settings that incentivise commencements and completions work. We need more vocationally trained workers, and this bill does accommodate this need.

While I support this bill, I think that there are improvements that we could make to help support employers, with particular attention to small business. Small businesses with less than 20 employees account for 97 per cent of all businesses in Australia. Many, if not most, of these businesses just don't have the cash flow, ability or even capacity to take on apprentices or trainees without additional assistance from the government.

Anyone who knows about small business in construction knows that, for those first couple of years, the apprentice costs the employer money, and that's money that the employer or small business—particularly if they're a sole trader—can't afford to cover. In the third year, the cost of the apprentice pretty much breaks even, and in the fourth year they start to be able to charge out a little bit more because, by the fourth year, a person tends to have a bit more autonomy and independence. However, they're still under the apprenticeship. They're still being guided. So when we look at small businesses across Australia and we wonder why they're not taking them on, it's because of the cost. We are expecting small businesses to carry the load of training the next generation, whereas if you go back 30 years, it was actually government that was the biggest apprentice trainer in Australia—certainly in South Australia. The South Australian government was the largest apprentice holder. It's not anymore.

The other support that I think small businesses and apprentices need is greater support in mentoring, providing that relationship and connecting a young apprentice—or indeed an adult apprentice—with a support network so that they continue their apprenticeship and that they complete their apprenticeship, because too many people take on an apprenticeship and only get to second or third year for a variety of reasons. In my visits around my electorate, this is a common discussion point among small businesses. They want to employ more trainees and apprentices, but the constraints that I mentioned previously stop them from doing so. I acknowledge that there are a number of programs that exist in this space, but I think we can do more.

In reviewing submissions to the government's Strategic Review of the Australian Apprenticeship Incentive System, I thought the recommendations of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry were particularly useful. They included the creation of a five-year job-creation incentive program with standard base-level payments to all employers of apprentices of up to $2,000 per quarter across the first two years for trainees and apprentices. These are targeted incentives for those areas that are deemed in shortage by the Jobs and Skills Australia—of an additional $2,000 payment above that standard base payment payable to employers, as well as completion payments of $2,500 once the apprentice or trainee completes their qualification is payable to the employer and an additional amount of $3,000 to be payable quarterly across two years for an adult-age apprentice.

We talk about an adult-age apprentice, but, really, we're often talking about a young person, aged 22 or 23, who maybe got out of school and wasn't entirely sure what they were going to do. They might have worked in hospitality, fast food or whatever for those first couple of years and then think to themselves, 'Actually, I'd really like to take on an apprenticeship,' but by age 21 or 22, that's an adult apprenticeship. It is not a traditional junior apprenticeship under junior apprenticeship wages. A lot of employers will not take on that 21- or 22-year-old, simply for the enormous cost for that small business.

My other concern relates to the cap on the numbers and how the smaller states like South Australia will fair in the carve-up of these places. I support this bill, and I call on the government to give careful consideration to the employer incentives for small businesses as I mentioned and the equitable allocation of places across our nation to ensure that states like my state of South Australia get their fair share.

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