Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

On election night I spoke about the historic mission of Labor governments: opening the doors of opportunity and then widening them. There's nowhere where that's more important than in vocational education and training. That is what this legislation does. It enshrines free TAFE as a permanent feature of our vocational education and training system. I'm very proud that no government has done more to rescue TAFE than we have, let's be frank. We have been working with state and territory governments across the board to provide the opportunity for young Australians to get the skills that they need but also to benefit workers retraining for new jobs and new industries with new skills. But the other things that free TAFE does aren't just benefiting an individual. We've created Jobs and Skills Australia to identify, with private sector involvement, what the skill sets that will be needed are, not just in a year but in five, 10 or 15 years time. Free TAFE is targeted at areas of skills shortage, both blue-collar and white-collar, such as electrical, construction and new industries such as information technology and the adoption of robotics and artificial intelligence, as well as the care sector—people working in early childhood education and working in aged care.

We benefit employers and we benefit the whole economy. This is one of the key mechanisms that we have to boost productivity in this country. What this legislation does is take the success that free TAFE has been and say: 'We want to enshrine it. We want it to be permanent.' We, of course, have now had something in the order of 600,000 Australians who have benefited from free TAFE, and I've met many of them.

On Friday, I was at Swinburne TAFE with Minister Giles, with Matt Gregg, the local candidate for Deakin, and with Gabriel Ng, the candidate that we have for the electorate of Menzies. Most importantly, I met one young Australian who had been doing his law degree—and he's still doing it—but decided halfway through his law degree that he'd rather build stuff. He's going into carpentry and getting that satisfaction. We were there in a structure that was being built, and he was proudly speaking about joinery and the skills that he had.

I do want to give another shout-out as well—not just to the students. One of the things I have found from going into TAFEs from the time when I was the Labor shadow minister for employment, services and training—many years ago now—is that, for many older workers, they are so proud to go into the local TAFE and to impart their knowledge and skills as electricians, as plumbers and gasfitters or as carpenters onto a new generation of Australians.

That's why we, as a government, are backing them in. We know that education is the most powerful weapon that we have against disadvantage and it is the best investment we can make in building Australia's future, because every challenge that we have to meet, every opportunity which is there to be seized, depends on investing in the skills and capacity of the Australian people, whether it's the tradies to build and plan the homes we need, the electricians and mechanics to deliver the clean energy to take us to net zero, the healthcare workers to look after our families, the aged-care workers and disability carers bringing security and dignity into the lives of our loved ones or the technology workers to help Australia succeed in a new era of digital transformation. In every field of national endeavour, so many of the jobs our nation needs to grow our economy, strengthen our society and compete and succeed in the world start at TAFE.

That's why one of our first priorities on coming to government was to put public TAFE back at the centre of vocational education and training, back where it belongs. There are many private vocational education and training providers who do a fantastic job, a great job, who specialise in a particular area and impart skills to Australians. But we know from the mess that was the migration system that we inherited that many of them simply aren't up to scratch.

One of those things that we know about public TAFE is that, without exception, there's no-one by definition who goes to a public TAFE who says, 'Oh, I was ripped off,' 'It was just about profiteering' or 'I didn't get proper training.' We know that public TAFE is so important. Of course the private sector has an important role to play as well, but, if you don't have a public TAFE system that is effective, then the system simply won't be able to deliver what is needed for our economy.

Now, I do note that the shadow minister, when speaking against this legislation, posed the question: what does it actually look like in the real world? Well, I'll tell you what it looks like in the real world. It looks like 35,000 Australians enrolling in construction courses. It looks like the carpentry students I have met everywhere, including in Adelaide. There are 35,000 studying early education. Katrina, from Swinburne TAFE, also in Melbourne, enrolled in a free certificate III course as a pathway to primary teaching because, in her words, 'Free TAFE came out and I thought: "Why not do it? I've got nothing to lose."' There are 50,000 people training in digital technology and 130,000, who I have met in TAFEs from Tasmania to South Australia to New South Wales to Queensland to WA, engaged in aged care and disability care.

That's what free TAFE looks like in the real world: aspiration in action, people aspiring to a better life for themselves but also aspiring to that sense of achievement when you can look at a new house that you have been a part of building, when you can look after an older Australian and know that you have given them dignity and respect in their later years, when you are a teacher who's managed to take a young Australian and help to shape their future and to educate them. That's what it looks like: hundreds of thousands of people training for a new career, whether they're young people or older workers training for a new opportunity.

Now, of these free TAFE places, it's important to note that one out of every three has been taken up in regional communities, and that is so important as well. To quote Chad, who I met as he was training to find a new job in the mining industry at Thornlie TAFE in Perth, where I visited along with the Premier, Roger Cook: 'I thought it was a great way to get my foot in the door. I'd say you should definitely have a crack.' Indeed, all over Australia, that is what our people are doing: backing themselves, getting the skills they need for a job that they want, not being held back by costs, not being left behind because they are unable to find a place. They are people being lifted up by public TAFE, and our economy and businesses are benefiting from a more skilled and a more productive workforce.

It is worth emphasising the connection between what TAFE delivers and our economic growth and our future, because a decade of cuts to TAFE and apprenticeships didn't just deprive people of the chance to train and retrain; it also inflicted on Australia the most severe skills shortage in 50 years. That's what we inherited. And skills shortages have an impact on the supply chain and then feed inflation. Indeed, they put petrol on inflation. That weakens our economic resilience, puts cost pressures on business and slows down key projects. And that's why it amazes me that the Liberal Party and the National Party are still saying that free TAFE is wasteful spending and a sugar hit. It's not a sugar hit and it's not wasteful. I'll tell you what's a waste. A waste is losing the potential of a young Australian to be trained for the jobs that they need. A waste is someone who needs to retrain for a new opportunity in life being denied that opportunity. There is waste of time and opportunity when housing and energy projects can't get underway because of skills shortages. There is waste when businesses have to look overseas, instead of Australians being trained and ready here at home.

When we look at our migration system, I want our first priority, and I make no apology for this, to be the training of Australians. That should be our starting point. But so many businesses are so desperate for skilled workers that they have to look overseas.

With this legislation, we understand that TAFE needs to be viewed as a component of the tertiary education system that is just as important as the university sector. Whether it's TAFE or university, we value both and we invest in both, and we want both to be affordable and accessible to all Australians, which is why we are also, of course, importantly, abolishing so much student debt. Three billion dollars of student debt has already been abolished, and we'll abolish 20 per cent of student debt if we are elected.

In announcing that the coalition would vote against this bill, the shadow minister said:

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

That was a very clear, unequivocal statement from not just the shadow minister but the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, there explaining in just one sentence why the opposition are opposed to free TAFE and why, when the Leader of the Opposition was the health minister, they sought to impose a tax every time someone visited a GP or every time someone went to a public hospital emergency department.

That they don't value Australians is the real issue. Australians do value TAFE. They do value Medicare. They do value things that help to make their life better, and that is what this legislation does. I say this: as long as there is a Labor government, free TAFE is here to stay. I commend the bill to the House.

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