Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Hunter brings to this chamber a motion about apprentices, and, despite the member for McEwen's protestations, which rubbished the coalition and rubbished good old 'Collingwood forever'—I'm not quite sure what he's got against the Magpie supporters—when you look back at the years, particularly of the Morrison government, what you see is delivery. What you saw in those nine years was a government with a laserlike focus on making sure that our apprentices had the very best environment so that they could not just survive but thrive—so that they could be their best selves.

What we had in those final couple of years—certainly, 18 months—of the Morrison government was a global pandemic, a worldwide shutdown not seen since 1919. Not since the end of World War I had the planet being subjected to economic conditions like this. The Great Depression was obviously a great setback, but the 1919 flu caused so much heartache and disruption as well to the economic fortunes of many nations which then went into the Great Depression. Those years of the 1920s and early 30s were shocking, just dreadful. During the pandemic of 2020, 1.1 million jobs were created—not necessarily by government, because government doesn't create jobs. It's private enterprise that creates jobs. Under our watch, under our stewardship, there 220,000 trade apprentices, three years of delivery under the member for Cook's government and 1,213 major transport projects supporting 100,000 jobs. It went from $110 billion to $120 billion of investment. I mention that because, all too often, our truckies are forgotten when we're talking about people who do the hard yards for this nation. We should be applauding our truck drivers because they keep the nation going. People often say it's not a skill; I defy anybody to back one of those B-doubles or larger vehicles into the tight nooks and crannies of supermarket yards where they do the distribution of goods to those places of food distribution. I defy anybody to be able to do it. They can they do and we owe them a debt of gratitude.

The member for Hunter, in his notes to this particular bill, talks about $72 billion going to McDonald's. I always like to see somebody with McDonald's on their CV, because you know they're going to turn up on time. You know they're going to be disciplined. You know they're going to do the right thing. Why he's picked on Macca's, I do not know. I do not understand that. To the point about fee-free TAFE, it is a bit of a furphy, because those other private providers do such a great job—yes, in competition with TAFE, they've been neglected by this government. They've been overlooked by this government. Their efforts have been overshadowed by this government. We need to do the very best we can for apprentices. One of the first things that we can do for apprentices is reduce the cost of living. But those opposite forgot about the cost of living. They didn't talk about the cost of living for the first 18 months they were in office. It was only after they lost the referendum for the Voice that they all of a sudden realised that people were hurting, particularly apprentices. Those apprentices who are just getting out into their own profession need every tax break and every bit of help they can get.

The former member for Warringah, Tony Abbott, when prime minister, brought in a great 'tools of the trade' benefit so that they could get the tools by which they could do their occupations and do them well. We have always had incentives in their for our apprentices. It's only a coalition government that will look after apprentices. It's only a coalition government that will address the cost-of-living pressures that apprentices are under.

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