Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last October the Rudd government launched the $100 million Apprentice Kickstart initiative as part of our response to the Keep Australia working report, which showed that people starting trade apprenticeships have dropped by more than 20 per cent compared to the same time only one year ago. That drop was overwhelmingly due to the effects of the global financial crisis, but it has been a long-term drop as well. Since I started my own apprenticeship in the electrical trades in 1982 there has been a steady decline in the number of apprentices starting in traditional trades.

It is intended that the Apprentice Kickstart program will sign up 21,000 new apprenticeships by the end of February this year, and the initiative has tripled the bonus for employers who take on a 15- to 19-year-old apprentice, with an increase in subsidy from $1,500 to $4,850. Employers receive $2,350 when they employ an apprentice in an eligible trade and they receive a further $2,500 after the apprentice completes nine months in that trade. With good money to be earned and excellent job prospects, there has never been a better time to consider a career path in the traditional trades.

I commend this program to every employer, and I would like to refer to a local employer whom I met with last week and who believes in taking new apprentices to grow his local business. Paul Junginger is the owner of PM Marine Manufacturing, which is located on the old fibre makers’ site in Bayswater North. Up until the early 1980s more than 2,000 people were employed in textile production on the site, but those days are now long past and there are very small businesses operating from the many buildings of what is now known as the fibre makers’ business park. Paul established his business seven years ago in Canterbury Road, Bayswater North, and his company produces an excellent range of recreational boats of fibreglass construction. I saw firsthand the skill and attention to detail that was applied to each and every task in the factory, and the quality of the finished product is superb. Paul employs 10 staff and, under the Apprentice Kickstart initiative, has taken on two new apprentices, Mitchell Bertachinni and Ryan Wassink. Paul’s business slogan is ‘innovate not imitate’, and for the last two years he has won the national trailer boat of the year award for the four- to seven-metre section. I congratulate Paul for employing two new apprentices and I wish the apprentices, Mitchell and Ryan, a long and prosperous career in the exciting field of boatbuilding.

The Rudd government has shown a great commitment to the trades, investing funds to bring on more apprenticeships, building trade colleges and increasing opportunities for preapprentices—and certainly helping when it comes to local businesses, where a bit of help from the government brings local people into areas that are growing. You would not actually think that there would be an industry in boatbuilding in the electorate of Deakin, being a long way from the sea, but there is and it has been around that area for many years. It is good to see that it is continuing, and I commend the Apprentice Kickstart program to the House.