Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Vocational and Further Education. Would the minister inform the House how the government is helping older workers to gain work skills? How many workers have potentially benefited so far, Minister?

Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Minister for Vocational and Further Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for Bowman and acknowledge a longstanding interest in education and training. In today’s world, people need access to training and education throughout their life—training, retraining and reskilling. In this respect, it is anticipated that in the future the demand for university qualifications will be roughly in balance with the current supply of university education—that is, around 20 per cent of the workforce. By contrast, in the future, it is anticipated that over 60 per cent of jobs will require vocational and technical education, vocational and technical qualifications, yet only 30 per cent of the working population have those qualifications.

This is why as a government we have increased real spending in vocation and technical education by over 88 per cent since we took office. It is not the virtually flat funding so disingenuously claimed by the Leader of the Opposition in this place two weeks ago. There has been a more than 88 per cent real increase in spending in the last 11 years. That is why we also announced, late last year, a package of measures worth over $840 million to train people in mid-career. Among the measures are 30,000 training vouchers a year with a value of up to $3,000. So far, since this program started on 1 January this year, with some 530 registered training authorities contracted to provide over 4,400 different courses, we have had over 3,000 vouchers issued in the last six weeks. That is a very high demand and a very important initiative. It is also why in this package we have decided to provide up to $13,000 in wage subsidies for those taking mid-career apprenticeships. We are also providing incentives for higher technical skills and much more.

But why are we in this position, where we are now providing billions of dollars to train people in mid-career? Why are we providing support and encouragement to people who are in their late 20s, throughout their 30s and in their early 40s—people who should be at the peak of their productive capacity? Why are we training people in this age group? It is because these people are the people who finished their early education throughout the eighties and much of the nineties. If each year through the eighties and early nineties the number of people who finished an apprenticeship was equal to the number who finished apprenticeships last year—142,000 young Australians—we would have in Australia now over one million more trained people in technical and vocational education. We would have over one million more people able to deal with the skills challenge that this country faces. This is Labor’s lost generation of tradesmen and tradeswomen—people in their late 20s, their 30s and their early 40s, who never got the opportunity to get a technical and trade education. This is Labor’s legacy of 13 years of neglect and denigration of the trades. These are the people—a whole generation of parents and their children—who were made to feel that a trade qualification is somehow second-class, because of Labor’s rhetoric through all those years.

Labor are still in denial. In the education revolution document put out by the Leader of the Opposition—it is 27 pages—how much do you think there is on technical education? There are four paragraphs out of 27 pages. They are still in denial. Just last month the member for Rankin, the shadow minister—listen to it—for service economy, small business and independent contractors said, of all things, ‘I think we can very easily overstate the importance of trades.’ Labor are still in denial. This government and the country must place a priority on training Labor’s lost generation of tradesmen and tradeswomen.

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

Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.