Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that not one dollar of his Skills for the Future package will go to attracting or supporting Australian young people to get into traditional trade apprenticeships? Given that almost two-thirds of Australian apprentices are under the age of 25, why have they been comprehensively ignored by this package? Given that the Prime Minister acknowledged on AM this morning the inevitable problem of retaining people in low-paid apprenticeships, why isn’t there any help for young apprentices, many of whom are on $6 or $7 an hour? Why is the Prime Minister so ignorant of the fact that 16-year-olds, 17-year-olds and 18-year-olds are the long-term future for dealing with Australia’s skills shortage?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Apart from the fact that I happen to think that just being over 25 or over 30 is still pretty young, and in fact I think a much higher age than that is still pretty young, I would counsel—not a word I normally use; it is a bit too politically correct for me—the Deputy Leader of the Opposition about introducing ageism into this debate. I think that is a very unwise thing to do. You ask about 16-year-olds, 17-year-olds and 18-year-olds. I will give you 403,600 responses to what this government has done for that age cohort, because that is the number of apprentices now in training, which is a 161 per cent increase since March 1996. I might also remind the Deputy Leader of the Opposition that the principal beneficiaries of the 25 Australian technical colleges—in fact really the only beneficiaries of those—are young Australians in years 11 and 12 and, the last time I checked, most Australians in years 11 and 12 were well under the age of 25.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Education, Science and Training. What support is the Australian government providing to universities to address the engineering skills shortage through the Skills for the Future package announced today?

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women's Issues) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Tangney for his question and I acknowledge his deep interest in this area. The $837 million Skills for the Future package, which was announced by the Prime Minister today, includes funding of $56 million over four years for 500 new engineering places at universities across Australia. These places will commence in 2008. These engineering places are going to contribute significantly to building our engineering capability and will add to the 65,000 students who are currently studying engineering and related technologies.

The 500 new Commonwealth supported places are in addition to the 510 new engineering places that I announced in July and they will commence in 2007, so over the next two years, 2007 and 2008, there will be 1,010 new engineering places, which will substantially improve the capacity of the higher education sector to deliver high-quality engineering courses in this country. That is going to support development of our infrastructure through to our high-technology industries and take full advantage of the mining and resources boom that is supporting our economy and driving our economic wealth.

I will be writing to Australian universities to seek proposals for the 500 new engineering places, and this underscores just how important the Skills for the Future package is. It will deliver more opportunities for Australians and it will continue to drive our innovation and global competitiveness with a productive workforce.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to the wage incentives contained in his skills package, which are limited to only 10,000 mature age apprentices a year. Is the Prime Minister aware that the Australian Industry Group estimates that Australia needs an extra 270,000 skilled workers? Isn’t this just another short-sighted pre-election patch-up covering the cracks caused by 10 long years of government neglect?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The short answer is no. The slightly longer answer is that the ‘only’ to which the Deputy Leader of the Opposition refers is well in excess of double the number of people who now enter mature age apprenticeships. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition sneers at the fact that there are only 10,000. I might remind her that, if she is talking about ‘onlys’, there were only 122,000 apprentices when her leader was Minister for Employment, Education and Training.

Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Vocational and Technical Education. Will the minister inform the House how the Australian Skills for the Future package will further improve apprenticeship training?

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lindsay. The government of the state she comes from is not meeting its obligations in the partnership the Commonwealth has with the Australian states on the whole area of vocational and technical education. In particular, in that state of New South Wales, TAFE fees have increased by 150 per cent and 200 per cent in some courses. In fact, even the Australian Education Union in their recent TAFE Futures report have acknowledged that young people are being pushed out of the education system by those TAFE fee increases in New South Wales. We have seen fee increases there to $1,700. I say to the member for Lindsay: keep up the work that you are doing to fight for your constituents on this front.

The Prime Minister today announced a boost of $837 million over five years, which will add to an already record-setting level of expenditure by an Australian government in the area of vocational and technical education. There has never been a government in Australia’s history that has spent as much money as this government is now spending and, in fact, even before today’s announcement, was spending on the area of vocational and technical education. The results are already in, with 403,600 people entering the training system as apprentices this year and 1.7 million people in the training system around the country.

The $408 million in work skills vouchers will give an opportunity to 30,000 people each year to access those vouchers in a way that in fact trusts them to make their own choices and make it work for them. It makes certain that eligible adults aged above 25 years who have not reached a year 12 outcome or a certificate II outcome or the elementary elements of vocational training can enrol in accredited literacy and numeracy courses so that they have an opportunity to make good their ambition and experience, to realise something for themselves and to take on the opportunity to participate even more fully than they might have already in Australia’s economy.

The $306.7 million support for mid-career apprentices will help up to 10,000 apprentices aged 30 and above each year who in fact are in the workforce, who have been there and done that but do not have the piece of paper to prove their ability, to get that piece of paper. It backs the employers as well as the employees in the decision to invest in those people to train. These sorts of initiatives are going to make an enormous difference. These sorts of initiatives are going to add to this record level of funding: the $156.8 million already in the system on support services for employers and Australian apprentices through the Australian apprenticeship centres; the $28.2 million in the $800 toolkit allowance—an allowance that Labor cannot guarantee and that could be under threat if there was ever a change of government but which came in as a result of this government focusing on young people and, in fact, all people in the training system—and the $571 million in the 2006-07 financial year alone for financial incentives to employers to back their decision on the margins to make a difference for their business by investing in their people. Today’s package is going to produce enormous dividends and continue the strong economic circumstance of this country.