Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Blaxland proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The importance of planning for the jobs of the future.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When you go to Silicon Valley you meet some extraordinary people. When I was there last year I met an extraordinary Australian. Her name is Tan Le. Tan Le came to Australia as a Vietnamese refugee at the age of four. By the age of 16 she was at university. By the age of 21 she was Young Australian of the Year. By 22, she was a barrister, and by 26 she had set up her first company. She now lives in San Francisco. She is the co-founder of a company called Emotiv. They are a neuro-engineering company. They make devices that read brain signals and can interpret facial expressions. You wear the device on your head. It can be used for everything from gaming—where, instead of a joystick, you can think it and see it on the screen—through to something else which is truly extraordinary. It can be used by quadriplegics to move their wheelchairs. It has the potential to change people's lives all around the world.

I asked her why she had set up this business in the United States and not here, at home, in Australia. The answer she gave me is telling. She said, 'It's because that's where the money is and that's where the experience and the skills are.' That story is instructive. We are a special country where incredible things, incredible stories, like this can happen, but we are a small part of an ever-increasingly more competitive world. And we are falling behind.

Harvard Business Review published a report the other day that looked at the digital economies of countries around the world. They said that Australia is stalling. Here is why. Remember what Tan told me about money and skills? If you are a start-up with a great idea like Tan's and you want to get access to capital in Australia, it is not as easy as it is in other countries. Our venture-capital industry is small. We spend more on the Melbourne Cup every year than we do on new start-up businesses every year. In other countries you can raise money through crowd funding. The United States introduced crowd-funding laws three years ago. New Zealand did it two years ago. But here in Australia we are still talking about it.

In 2013 CAMAC, the Corporations and Markets Advisory Committee, was asked by the former Labor government to develop a plan to introduce crowd funding. The government has had that plan on its desk for a year. It was given to them in May last year. What has happened in the last 12 months? Nothing—or no evidence that anything has happened. No legislation. We are still waiting for laws to be introduced into this parliament.

When the Minister for Communications was asked about this—when he was at Fishburners, only a week ago—when he was asked by start-up entrepreneurs why it was taking so long to introduce crowd-funding laws in Australia, his answer was: 'Well, government is quite hard, actually.' That is the excuse. That is what it said in a newspaper, and I have not heard a personal explanation denying it. He went on and blamed the culture of the bureaucracy in Treasury. They have introduced crowd funding in the United States. They have done it in New Zealand, they have done it in the UK, France, Canada, Italy and even Kenya, but we are still waiting for it here. Apparently, government is a bit hard. We can fix these problems and you can do it quickly if this government introduces legislation into the parliament.

What is harder to fix is the skills problem, the skills challenge—the lack of skills, the lack of STEM skills—that we have in Australia. Here is the challenge. We are seeing an increasing drop in the number of low-skilled jobs available in Australia and, in contrast, an increase in the number of high-skilled jobs. Most of those are jobs that require STEM skills: science, technology, engineering and maths. Seventy-five per cent of the fastest-growing jobs in Australia today require STEM skills, and we are not producing enough people with those skills. Let me give you an example.

In 2003 about 9,000 people graduated in Australia with ICT degrees. Ten years later that was reduced to 3,446. In other words, the number of people graduating with an ICT degree in Australia, in the last 10 years, has dropped by two-thirds. We have a similar problem at high school when it comes to maths. The number of people studying maths at an intermediate or advanced level, at high school, has dropped by about 35 per cent in the last 20 years. How do we compare with the rest of the world? Sixteen per cent of Australians graduate from university with STEM degrees. South Korea is about double that. In China 41 per cent of students graduate with a STEM degree. In Singapore it is nearly 50 per cent. These are the countries that Australia is competing with. We are already falling behind and making it more expensive to go to university. Introducing $100,000 university degrees is only going to make it harder.

Already, employers are finding it hard to get employees with the necessary STEM skills. The chief scientist put out a report two or three weeks ago where he had done a survey of employers. He asked them what they were looking for from employees and how they were able to get employees with STEM skills. They surveyed hundreds of employers. They found that a third of employers could not find the employees they needed with STEM skills, STEM graduates. I was at Google last week. I asked the same question. They have the same problem. Google employs about 1,000 people Australia-wide. About half of them are computer programmers—and half of those come from overseas. The reason for that is they cannot find the workers they need with the skills they need.

That is why what Bill Shorten announced, what the Leader of the Opposition announced, only two weeks ago is so important. A plan to build the skills that we need for the jobs of the future—everything from coding in primary school through to training more teachers through to writing off the HECS debts of 100,000 university STEM graduates. That is just the start. If we are going to do this properly we cannot just do it at university or at high school, it has to start at primary school.

Last year, in the United Kingdom, they introduced coding in kindergarten. Other countries are doing exactly the same thing: Vietnam, Canada and Singapore. Finland is starting it next year. The United States is trialling it in 30 school districts, right across the country, including Chicago and New York. Why are they doing this? They are doing it because they understand that coding is the literacy of the 21st century. Malcolm Turnbull understands this as well because he has said much the same thing. He understands—like we understand—that students in this century will need to understand coding like we needed to understand English and maths in the last century. It does not mean that everybody is going to become a computer programmer. Of course, that is not going to happen. Not everybody who studies maths becomes a mathematician either, but we use it every day. It is exactly the same here.

That is why what we announced in our budget reply is so important. We need our kids not just to be able to use technology but to be able to create technology, not just to be able to play the game but to be able to make the game. The Business Council of Australia has called for this. The start-up sector has called for this. Malcolm Turnbull has called for this. The day after the budget reply, he said:

If we want to succeed, and continue to succeed as a prosperous first-world economy … we need to be leaner, faster, more imaginative, more innovative, more technologically sophisticated, and the key tool for that is coding.

He is right, and Bill Shorten is right. We need to make it happen. The problem is: Christopher Pyne took it out of the draft curriculum. That is the problem. Government is apparently too hard. We have not got crowdfunding legislation yet. We still do not have coding in the curriculum, even though some people on the other side understand how important this is. It is not happening because government is a bit too hard.

Let me go back to the story of Tan Le. I remember her telling me that when she landed in Australia her mum told her to touch the ground because this is a very special place. The little girl bent down and she touched the ground and she looked up and she said to her mum, 'It doesn't feel very special.' Her mum looked back to her and said, 'You've got to make it special with your mind.' That is what the little girl did, and that is what we need to do—to make sure that we build the skills we need for the future. The problem is: this government is not doing it. It is going to take a Bill Shorten led Labor government to get the job done.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If Bill Shorten is the answer, one shudders to think what the question may be. Really, we are being advised by the Labor Party on entrepreneurship, advised by a party that, when it was in government, had not one member of its cabinet—not one—that had ever been in business, no business background at all. The serried ranks of apparatchiks—there they are before us. That is the problem with the Labor Party. It has no understanding of business.

I am thrilled that the member for Blaxland has met with Tan Le in Silicon Valley. It is good. It is obviously a new experience for him to go there to Silicon Valley. I have been going there for decades. I have started over a dozen companies myself. And, by the way, so have many of my colleagues, because one of the big differences between our side of politics and Labor's is that we do not theorise about business, large or small; we do not believe that government is the solution to every business problem; we know that it springs from the enterprise and entrepreneurship of millions of Australians. The fundamental problem with the Labor Party, Madam Speaker—and you heard it from the member for Blaxland today—is that Labor believes in its heart, in its DNA, that government knows what is best. We believe government's role is to enable you to do what is best.

Tan Le is a very impressive Australian entrepreneur. I have made her acquaintance too. She is quite a star in Silicon Valley, among the many Australian entrepreneurs there. And do you know what she raised with me, Madam Speaker, when I was there sometime ago? She complained to me about the fact that the Labor Party had so wrecked the employee share scheme legislation that start-up companies in Australia could not afford to offer shares or options as incentives to their employees. And she was not alone. The single most common complaint I have had from entrepreneurs in the technology space, talking about the legislative priorities that this parliament should address itself to, is about this fundamental problem. In 2009, in a fit of madness, the Labor government decided that any employee that was given an option or a share by their employer, even if it was in a start-up, where the shares could be worth a lot or—more likely, regrettably, given the success rate of small companies—nothing, would be taxed. Even there, those shares, those bits of paper, would be taxed and they would have to go and borrow the money to pay the taxes. Of course, as usual, what happened? Only the very largest companies could hire the accounting firms and the lawyers, at great expense, to structure their way around it. And what did one small Australian start-up after another do? It moved precisely to where the member for Blaxland was—to Silicon Valley. So I would say to the honourable member: that is an absolute own goal, a complete own goal.

As for crowdfunding, yes, it is an important part of the mix and, yes, the government will be presenting legislation on that later in the year. It is, however, very important to get it right, because crowdfunding has to balance the powerful aggregational powers of the internet—being able to get a meaningful amount of money in lots of small bits—with consumer protection. Getting that balance is critically important, so it is worthwhile taking care to ensure that the legislation is drafted correctly.

Let us turn now to the question of coding and STEM subjects in schools. I think all honourable members agree that it is a very, very important part of our curriculum, of our educational objectives, to ensure that people—young children, in particular—have experience with coding. As a father of a schoolteacher whose teaches coding at her school, I am aware of the keen interest that young people have in this area. I just want to remind the honourable member that the government is investing $3½ million—as part of $12 million in an Industry, Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda—to support the teaching of STEM subjects. We are focused on promoting STEM subjects in schools and increasing the amount of coding taught in schools. It is very important, of course, that this be done with the cooperation of state education departments. It is also very important that we see more students completing their education with maths or science—and you heard the Minister for Education and Training talking about the importance of that yesterday.

The Leader of the Opposition's thought bubble on coding and STEM subjects is quite interesting because, as usual, it is amazingly inconsistent. The backflips he is capable of are truly athletic. If only he were as eloquent as he is flexible, he would make a bigger contribution.

In 2008, then Prime Minister Rudd cut the cost of students studying STEM subjects, but this was then reversed in MYEFO 2011-12, with average student contributions for mathematics, statistics and science almost doubling in the cost per unit to about $8,300. They then extended this to existing students studying STEM in the following year's budget, resulting in considerable savings over the forward estimates. This is what the then minister, Senator Evans, said:

The reduction in student contributions for mathematics, statistics and science units since 2009 has not been effective in substantially increasing the number of students undertaking maths and science at university. Students are predominantly motivated not by price but by their interests, abilities and career preferences when selecting courses.

This is a very, very important point. The best way to get more students studying STEM, to get more people starting companies in Australia, is to ensure that government does not throw up stupid obstacles, such as the Labor Party's legislation on ESOPs; that government makes it easier to start companies; that government has a strong economy that encourages resilience, entrepreneurship and enterprise; and, above all, that government ensures that it does its job of managing the economy as efficiently as possible.

A big part of my portfolio and the honourable member's shadow portfolio is of course the National Broadband Network. That was a project—remember this—which was conceived in 77 days. It was started in 77 days. That was all the time that Labor took to embark on a $43 billion project. They had no idea how much it would cost or how long it would take to build. Indeed, just before the election the Labor Party, so unaware of what this project would cost, were saying it was costing only $2,200 to pass and connect premises with fibre. Now that nearly one million premises have been passed across the whole network, we now actually know what it costs. The real figure is $3,600, plus another $700 for the capitalised costs of the Telstra pits and pipes.

So the reality is that, on this massive infrastructure project, so important to technology and connectivity, so important to innovation, so important to all the things the honourable member claims to be committed to, the Labor Party was mishandling the investment in an extraordinary manner. In fact, Bill Scales, in his independent audit of this project, said, 'This policy process that set up the NBN, of Labor, in 77 days was rushed, chaotic and inadequate, with only perfunctory consideration by the cabinet.' That is the level of incompetence we have from Labor and the reason why Labor cannot be trusted when it talks about creating jobs and fostering innovation. Labor wants us to believe that a government composed of people with no relevant business experience, with a shocking track record, can somehow or other provide the spark, provide the leadership, to the entrepreneurs of Australia. That is what it promises.

Let us never forget that, in those six years, Labor spent $2 in extra spending for every $1 they received in extra revenue. That sums up this chronicle of incompetence and why the honourable member's claims to be in favour of innovation fall absolutely flat.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was very interesting to hear from the honourable member, the member for Wentworth, but we did not hear at all a plan about the future and the future of jobs in this country. Indeed, when you look at the budget papers and at the lack of investment in research and development, at the cuts to the CSIRO and scientists, at the way in which the government are increasing fees to deprived skilled kids getting into universities, you can see that not only do they not have a plan to actually provide the skills needed for the emerging areas of growth in the Labor market but indeed they are putting impediments in place to stop these skills being there to anticipate the growth in the labour market. These new areas of growth were outlined by the Leader of the Opposition in the budget reply speech last week and, indeed, go to the areas that matter most for our young people.

It is true to say that, in the end, business creates jobs but the government has the responsibility to create the environment in which those businesses can thrive. The best way for those businesses to not only survive but thrive is to ensure that there is sufficient investment in research and development, and sufficient investment by a government in skills. The Leader of the Opposition's commitment last week was to ensure that we would focus on the emerging areas that are growing fast in our labour market—new technologies, namely, science, technology, engineering and mathematics. These are the areas that we as a government need to focus on. We would have to do that in government and it is certainly the government's role to do such a thing.

But the Minister for Communications did not make any commitments in this regard. It is a lame defence put forward by the Minister for Communications on the lack of a plan by the government for this emerging challenge for the nation.

By contrast, the member for Blaxland clearly outlined how we are falling behind other comparable countries. There is no doubt that, when it comes to points of comparison, we are not keeping up with comparable countries. You only have to look at some of the areas where we are inferior. Our venture capital industry is small and not well developed and, in per capita terms, it is about one third the size of the United States's venture capital industry. It is almost a quarter of the size of Canada's. We should be matching pound for pound our investment and indeed our encouragement of venture capital with these two countries, yet we are falling behind. As an OECD nation, we are falling behind in research and development in relation to these areas.

When you look at the forecast in the government's own budget figures, it is no wonder that you see an increase in unemployment over time. Is it any wonder you are seeing unemployment rise in the next financial year to 6.5 per cent? Is it any wonder that you are seeing 80,000 more people lining the unemployment queues today than was the case at the last election? The government has no plan to deal with these issues. It has no plan to articulate what is needed. But, of course, we do have a plan. We have a plan to ensure we encourage young people, whether it be in primary school, secondary school or higher education, to take up these areas and that skill acquisition at a very early age, like other countries do, to ensure we can compete with countries in our region. But we will not hold our breath when it comes to this government. It has put things in the way of such skill acquisition by increasing fees as it seeks to do at universities, by depriving investment in primary schools and secondary schools, by ripping away the billions of dollars to those schools. We will see a lack of investment and a lack of capacity of this country to ensure that young people acquire such skills in the emerging areas of the economy and labour market.

The government now has a chance and opportunity to attend to this issue. The opposition wants to work with the government on such matters. We have outlined the areas where we would like to go. Indeed, if the government responded positively to the views of the opposition, we could work together on these issues. But we will not hold our breath because, in the end, this government has no regard for people that are looking for jobs and no regard for the future. It only has regard for the Prime Minister's own job.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to speak on today's MPI. Jobs certainly are a key focus of this government. It is an issue that has certainly been at the front of my mind as I have done work, particularly in recent months, in the area of STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths. Everyone that I have spoken to has certainly acknowledged that a lot more needs to be done to improve the STEM skills of our nation. We must turn our minds to some practical and some real solutions to what is a very complex problem.

While the solutions appear to lie primarily with education, it is industry that wears the outcomes of education. I think that there are some things we need to do before we race headlong into coming up with some purported solutions to this. We need to understand the problem. And, as I have already said, it is a complex problem. Let me start by talking about the jobs of the future.

Anyone who says that they can predict what the jobs of the future are going to be are actually kidding themselves. But there are some key indicators of what the skills will be for the jobs of the future. Those skills include the ability to analyse data. We are amassing enormous amounts of data. We will need people in the future who understand how to analyse data. We will need people with strong statistical analysis skills. We will also need people who have skills in the area of computer coding.

If we further start to define the problem, we know that the issues are faced by those in years 5 to 8. Our target age group are the 10-year-olds to the 14-year-olds. There is, however, a strong argument that we should be engaging much earlier. There has already been reference to programs that are being run in kindergartens overseas. Germany is certainly an example of where science is being introduced into kindergartens. Those programs are already being rolled out in Australia. In Sydney alone, there are over 40 centres that are currently introducing science into kindergarten.

But we know there is an issue we need to address—that is, the impact of the influencers of our students. We need to impact on the teachers. We need to make sure that we have good quality teachers with strong science and maths skills themselves, and with the confidence to go out there and work with the students and engage with them. We need to ensure that they are making science and maths, in particular, fun and interesting. We know that we have to engage with the parents because parents are key influencers of their children. We need to make sure that parents are engaged in building STEM futures for their children.

We need to look at career advisers and engage with them so that they understand that the jobs of the future exist out there in the science, technology, engineering and maths areas. Of course, the fourth component is to make sure that we are engaging with the principals. There seems to be this incredible and almighty push to actually obtain the best possible OP or ATAR score. Often that is done to the detriment of the students who potentially could engage and undertake work in science, engineering, maths and technology at schools. So we have to influence the principals to make sure they are guiding their teachers, career advisers and students appropriately for what the jobs of the future are going to be.

The problem is certainly complex, and there is not just one magical fix for this. There is not just one solution to this. I think it is incumbent on all of us here to be aware of the complexities of the issues and to be a little bit conscious of making sure that this is an issue that we should not dismiss or make light of. We should actually listen to the views that are being put in this place and have a sensible debate about the way forward.

We need to understand that it is going to take a minimum of 10 years to influence the 10-year-olds in school now; to get them through their science subjects and out into the workforce. This is a long-term process, but it is certainly one in which the work has already been started by this government. We intend to continue, and I am committed to making sure that we improve STEM skills in Australia.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If a country could open up nearly half a million new jobs through one sector alone, you would think that you would seize that opportunity and try and generate that job growth. If that sector could contribute four per cent of GDP, over $100 billion—and that is up 0.4 per cent from what it is doing now—you would think it would be supported, especially in a climate where the jobs and the income being generated by one sector in particular, mining, are disappearing or shrinking before our eyes, and there is urgency: how do we actually generate new jobs and regear the economy to make sure that the next generation of Australians coming through will have jobs? Yet we do not have any sense of a national mission to regear the economy and prepare it for the jobs that are around the corner. You would think that we would accept the need for that, you would think that we would prepare for it, but that is not what we see at all. We see the numbers and the types of jobs diminishing.

To respond to the parliamentary secretary, who said, 'We don't know the shape of those jobs in the future': we actually do. The sector that is thinking about this, the tech sector, is desperate to see government think about it, and it released a report last month. StartupAUS, which is made up of entrepreneurs who are focused on this space, are saying that they are frustrated by a government that is not listening to them and not responding. They have all the jobs there. They can see what is needed to create those jobs and, importantly, get people ready for those jobs—and there are people ready to back that up.

For example, when I visited Melbourne last week, I saw a group that has been around since 2010, Sonoa Health, that is creating scores of jobs there related to tapping into the amazing amount of information that exists in the healthcare space to be able to tailor it to individuals. They are doing it right now. They have people like John Stewart, who turned his back on a lucrative career in investment banking and has said he is prepared to put his own money into this enterprise and to do it right now. When you see the jobs that are being created, you realise the truism that exists in this sector—that is, for every one job that is created in the tech sector, five more are created elsewhere. For example, in the US, the tech sector has a jobs multiplier, a phenomenal jobs multiplier: 25 times more jobs are created in the tech sector than in any other. So what is being done to support that? You have to focus on what you can do to boost talent and what you can do to boost capital.

This budget did nothing in that regard. It took Bill Shorten to actually say, 'If we've got these skills shortages, what will we do to invest in skills; what will be done to support people?' So, what we want to do is invest in STEM skills—and this is where the coding element is important, as referred to by the shadow minister and, in particular, the opposition leader—to get young people thinking early about what they can do by introducing coding in schools. What did the coalition do? They took it out of the national curriculum. They talk about the importance of coding, through their communications minister, but their education minister stops those skills being acquired.

We talk about opening up new avenues for capital. We were the ones who put forward a $500 million fund to be able to co-invest and support the capital needs of start-ups in this country—nothing like that from those opposite. New avenues are opening up for capital through crowd-funding, yet those opposite sat on an independent report that gives a road map to providing crowd-sourced equity funding. There is nothing there.

We have a combination, for example, of 20,000 Australians working right now in Silicon Valley. They are there because there is not enough opportunity here and there is not enough capital being circulated here, and those are the things that we do need to focus on to build the skills and the jobs of the future. For those opposite who think it might be too hard, it is worth bearing this in mind: Silicon Alley, New York, has in 2015, for the first time, edged out California in the total number of start-up funding applications that have been generated. They are doing better in New York now than in Silicon Valley. Why? Because the state of New York and the city of New York have focused on this area. Where manufacturing is changing there and not generating jobs—similar to the types of challenges we have—they have backed up the tech sector and they have seen companies grow and they have seen economic activity flourish. It can be done if you are committed to doing it.

The issue is: is this government prepared and committed to supporting these future jobs for the next generation of Australians? The answer is no. (Time expired)

Louise Markus (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased that those opposite agree that it is important to plan for jobs for the future. That is one thing that we do agree on; how we get there is something we may disagree on. This government understands that the best planning you can do for jobs is to plan to deliver a strong economy—an environment in which business can prosper and, indeed, want to invest.

In the electorate of Macquarie, there are some 11,000 businesses. All contribute to jobs, and that is why, in the 2015-16 budget, we have planned to deliver so many measures to strengthen and grow small businesses. Small businesses provide some 4.5 million Australians with their jobs. They provide four in 10 jobs in the private sector, six in 10 jobs in the construction sector and eight in 10 jobs in the agriculture sector. Additionally, we are reducing the costs for small businesses to employ job seekers, through initiatives such as wage subsidies, and by assisting job seekers gain valuable work experience by providing $18 million over four years. Whilst this government recognises the challenges that young people are facing in jobs in an ever-changing world, wage subsidies will also be available to the mature-age worker through the Restart initiative.

The 2015-16 budget invests in education from preschool to postgraduate studies as part of the government's commitment to increasing opportunity, improving and safeguarding quality and excellence in education and ultimately improving job prospects. Total Commonwealth funding for schools across Australia will increase by $4.1 billion, a 27.9 per cent increase from 2014-15 through to 2018-19.

Members opposite have mentioned skills and training. There will be significant reform, including better governance, the introduction of a unique student identifier, a new model for supporting Australian apprentices and their employers, a contestable model for training packages and a review of the systems training products. There are also several major initiatives underway, with trade support loans for apprentices and the $664 million over five years for the Industry Skills Fund, supporting businesses to ensure that their staff have the skills required to make their businesses grow in the 21st century. Along with this, young employed people will receive skills linked to real jobs and support to re-engage with work, training or school through the government's two youth training pilots, which I have mentioned in this place before and which are being trialled in 32 sites across Australia, including the seat of Macquarie.

Under the Training for Employment scholarships, there will be around 7,500 scholarships. This is 7,500 young people who will receive up to $7,500 to assist employers to take on and train unemployed young people. The Youth Employment Pathways program offers up to $2,000 in assistance to eligible community service organisations to help disengaged 15- to 18-year-olds to get back into school, start VET or move into the workforce. These are programs that are already on the ground, impacting young people and creating opportunities for them to step into the work space.

Today we are talking about the future. Recently, the Minister for Education reflected on some comments by the Leader of the Opposition and said that the Australian government is investing $3.5 million to ensure that all students have the opportunity to study computer coding at both primary school and high school. The minister went on to say that the investment is part of the $12 million Industry Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda to support the teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The future is largely unknown. We know that, in the fast-growing technological age in which we live and work, our young people will have ever-shifting and very fast-growing demands placed upon them. It is important to set them up for success into the future.

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, like many of these dark days of the Abbott government, I sat through question time and I despaired for Australia; I sat back in my seat and despaired for Australia.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was not because of the sad and relentless negativity, a good example of which are the interjections here; it was not even because of the appalling small-mindedness that we continue to see from this government; it was because of the total lack of vision that we saw on the other side of the chamber. That is what this government delivers up day after day after day. This really worries me because this is a time when we really need vision. When we think about whether we are prepared for the economy of the future—the important policy debate that the government is so enthusiastically trying to participate in—we see a few things that we probably should be concerned about. I will talk about some of these issues. One of them is our engagement with Asia. All Australians out there on the street can tell you that Asia is going to be important to Australia's future, but I think that probably not many of them know that only nine per cent of Australian businesses are actually doing business in Asia today. Another indicator that worries me is that, over the last decade in Australia, we have seen stagnation in the improvements to our year 12 retention rate, and yet a lot of the countries we are competing with are seeing improvements there. Even when we look more broadly at the performance of our education system, we see real causes for concern. Australia's education system is declining in performance year after year, and the countries that we have previously thought of as countries that we would be giving the great ideas to are now outperforming us. China, for example, is right up there at the top of the league tables.

Jobs of the Future fits into this important discussion about where we as a country are going. I have spoken a little bit in the parliament today about some of the reasons why we might be really optimistic about the future opportunities for Australia. It is true that Australia has a really important history of innovation. Australian scientists are incredible people. They invented spray-on skin. They invented the black box. The CSIRO was integral to the invention of wi-fi. All these things give me cause to think really positively about the future. But I think the seismic shift in the way our economy functions had not been really well discussed in this parliament until the Leader of the Opposition gave his Budget reply speech a few days ago. The Leader of the Opposition talked about the fact that, in about two decades, about 47 per cent of the jobs that exist in our economy today will be gone. That is enormous change—certainly change that we have not seen in the last 20 years in Australia. As the economy changes, we are seeing low- and middle-skill jobs disappear and more and more high-skill jobs being created. The Leader of the Opposition made the important point that 75 per cent of the fastest-growing job categories are in these stem professions. When we look at whether our economy is prepared for this future that is available to it, we also see a lot of causes for concern—75 per cent of the jobs that are growing are in stem professions. Yet, as our shadow minister for communications foreshadowed, the number of ICT graduates Australia is producing is actually declining. We want to debate these issues, we want to have this discussion, yet what we see from the government is guffawing and laughing and a relentless focus on the politics of the day to day. I think it is very sad.

I want to talk about some of the things Labor wants to do in response to these really important changes that are going to affect the lives of all Australians over the next 50 years so. One of the ideas that the Leader of the Opposition talked about in his Budget reply speech is the Smart Investment Fund. This is a really important idea—half a billion dollars that Labor wants to see put into this important start up community. Seek.com, for example, started with a $2.5 million grant from government and it is now a $5 billion organisation. We can see government playing a really important role here. We have talked a little bit in this debate about coding, so I will not cover that ground again. But I just want to say that the third and final component of this was around stem education. The Leader of the Opposition spoke about some really important ways that we can increase participation in stem education, especially the participation of women. Labor is the only political party in Australia talking about this. I am really proud of that and I just wish that the government would step up and show some leadership on these subjects.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Planning for jobs of the future—if you were not laughing, you would be crying about what you hear from the other side. This is a political party full of unionists, full of political staffers and lawyers who have never—if you asked how many on that side have put up their own money or have employed people if not from their own money then from their ideas, it would probably be a big, fat zero.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You hear that because the answers to this are government. The answer to more jobs in the future is government. I can tell you right now there is more money. There is venture capital money. There is money to be invested in this country, and they are looking for people with ideas. They are looking for people who have opportunities and know what they want to do, and they are not looking at government.

It is like the show The Shark Tank. 'Don't come to me; go to the government. Go and get co-investment from them. That's a good idea.' That is how they think. So what should we do as a government? Obviously, government plays a role. It is not in the sad ideas from the other side coming, as you might expect, from people who have never invested their own money in other people's jobs or had an idea that has employed other people. The important things we are doing as a government are the important things that are important to small businesses, as many people on this side keep saying because they have been in small business and employed people in small business, employing people from their own ideas, employing people from their own money.

What is this government doing to plan for jobs of the future? There are many things. I only have three minutes left and could probably go for three hours talking about the things this government has done to plan for the future. One—and they think it is just a bit of a sideshow—is whenever we have the red tape repeal days. It is not a sideshow; it is essential to the viability and the productivity of many small businesses, because what can they do when they do not have as much red tape? They employ more people doing productive things.

What else have we done as a government? Obviously, we have just introduced probably the best budget for small business this country has seen in decades. What do tax cuts do for business? They give them more opportunity to employ more people. The tax write-off has been spoken about. If there is one thing I think we have wrong in the budget—and I am happy to admit it—it is that I think the take-up of this $20,000 tax write-off will be bigger than we think. And you know what? That is a good thing because that is small business people out there employing with their own ideas and encouraging job growth in this country.

What else have we done? Obviously, we have the free trade agreements. Let's not forget those. The free trade agreements are increasing jobs in my community as we speak. As we know, we have to be a competitive country because we are into exports and we are an open economy looking for export markets.

Honourable members interjecting—

It's very competitive to speak in here! And the free trade agreements are helping businesses big and small in my community to employ more people because they have more markets, they are selling more products and that has been good for job growth in this country. The other side could not close it off.

The other speaker earlier mentioned the employee share schemes. Gee, that was a brilliant idea from an ex-political staffer. Let's tax people before they can realise the money from an employee share scheme. Whoever's brain dead idea that was: that worked! I might have to skip a few pages here. I can go for three hours but had three minutes.

Again, what I get and what is, unfortunately, reinforced whenever we have debates like this in this House is that the other side always thinks the government is a genius. Government knows what to do. We should be co-investing, we should be doing this and we should be doing that. Like everything, the answer to most things is not in this chamber. The answer is not us investing in small business. The answer, as always, is for us to get out of the way, is for us to encourage the men and women of Australia who have great ideas, great opportunities and are putting their capital and their ideas on the line. We are here to support them by getting out of the way.

Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Earlier this year I hosted a dozen MPs from all sides of politics in a session with Code Club Australia, a nationwide not-for-profit group that is teaching our children the language of the 21st century: coding. For an hour before question time the pollies hunched over their laptops, ready to learn the basics of how to give instructions to a computer. Watching these pollies at the time reminded me of the classroom of coders in Altona Primary School in my electorate. They also have a code club teaching exactly the same thing.

What they were learning was not just a new language; it was a new way of thinking, a new way of solving problems and a new skill set for the future. I tell you: if MPs can learn this in half an hour, every 10-year-old in the country can do so too—

Mr Pasin interjecting—

other than the member for Barker, possibly!

The problem is that, at the moment, not enough Australian kids are getting the chance to learn this new way of thinking in our schools. Code Club Australia was founded by Annie Parker because of a problem that she was continually confronting in her day job as the co-founder of muru-D, Telstra's start-up accelerator. There were simply not enough Australians leaving our schools and universities with skills in coding and computational thinking, so she set up a not-for-profit designed to fix a problem that this government is refusing to address.

This skills void is a real problem for Australian businesses and Australians in general, who are being set up to miss out on the opportunities of the jobs of the future. Digitalisation and connectivity mean that even today every company, no matter what the industry, must be a software company. As many have noted, software is eating the world, and understanding the basics of how to solve problems in this new world is crucial for everyone in the workforce even if they never write a line of code themselves.

The rest of the world is already getting this message. Over 12 European countries already have coding as part of their school curriculum, with another seven countries including Singapore and New Zealand in the process of implementing it. To thrive in the modern economy, Australians need more than just to be passive users of technology; they need to understand how to use technology to innovate. People in the IT sector—the sector that I worked in before coming to this place—describe the difference as being the difference between being able to ride a tricycle and ride a bicycle: anyone can ride a tricycle within seconds of seeing one, but it is those who learn the extra skills necessary to ride a bike who can get to more places. In Australia, unfortunately, we are leaving the bike in the shed. This year the Harvard Business Review ranked Australia's digital capacity as 'stalling out'. Only 32 per cent of Australian students have the opportunity of learning to code in school as either a curriculum subject or an extracurricular activity.

We are also falling behind in science, technology, engineering and mathematics—the STEM skills. From 1991 to 2007, the percentage of Australian students studying chemistry fell from 23.3 per cent to 18 per cent and physics fell from 20.9 per cent to 14.6 per cent. The numbers of students studying tertiary ICT courses have plummeted, falling by 52 per cent in the decade from 2003 to 2013. The percentage of students in tertiary mathematics degrees in Australia is just 0.5 per cent, less than half of the OECD average. Seventy-five per cent of the fastest growing jobs in Australia require STEM skills. We have to start making choices about the future of work in Australia, and we cannot ignore the writing on the wall that is telling us that at the moment we need a new approach to take full advantage of the skills of the future.

That is where Bill Shorten and Labor have articulated a clear plan and a vision for the future. It is not just a luxury for those who can afford it as private extracurricular tutoring; Labor are committed to ensuring that coding is taught in both primary and secondary schools across the country. We are also committed to upskilling primary and secondary school teachers and writing off the HECS debts of 100,000 STEM university graduates. That is right—not creating $100,000 degrees but rather 100,000 STEM graduates. This stands in stark contrast to the Abbott government's attitude to the teaching of STEM in our schools and universities. It explicitly stated that ICT studies do not need to be taught in primary school and only need to be studied as an elective in secondary school. That was the Minister for Education and Training's brilliance in appointing Kevin Donnelly to run an inquiry about the skills that our nation will need in the future.

The reality is that if we are only allowing kids to learn coding in secondary school we have already missed the boat. David Cameron gets this. The Estonian government gets this. Why don't the Prime Minister and the minister for education? If we are serious about taking advantage of the digital revolution and preparing for the jobs of the future, we must act now. The lead times are long.

In his budget reply speech, the Leader of the Opposition said:

A budget should match the priorities of the nation.

Preparing Australia for the jobs of the future must be a national priority for all of us in this place. The complete absence of any discussion of the future of our nation in the government's budget speech is a gaping hole in the middle of the government's economic agenda and it is one that the opposition are ready to fill when we come to government.

Nickolas Varvaris (Barton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the House for the opportunity to speak on this matter of public importance today, and I thank the member for Blaxland for creating the chance for all of us to have a conducive and robust discussion on planning for jobs for current and future generations of Australians.

Australia is a generous and prosperous nation that provides equal access to opportunity for all people. Opportunities such as access to quality primary and secondary education and tertiary qualifications all enable individuals to obtain a job in the future. We believe in rewarding based on effort. We believe that equipping a person with the skills they need should be the basis what we as parliamentarians and law makers do. We want to facilitate and enable the right conditions in which people are afforded the opportunity to seek learning and training so that they are job-ready now and into the future.

All jobs are valuable to our national economy and, more so, to a person's sense of identity and esteem. However, in order for all Australians to be able to find work, years of planning and coordination is required from all levels of government. We need to have the right framework in place so that our teachers can provide the essential skills necessary for young people from early education to higher education. We must also enable opportunities outside of the traditional classroom for students to further develop their knowledge and life experience to transition from learning in a classroom to the workplace. Regulation and legislation that we enact must be able to reflect the needs of the marketplace, employers, workers and students.

I note that many of those on the coalition side actively lobby for incentives for job creation so that more local jobs can be created and, for those who live outside of the CBD, to minimise travelling time. We are living in times of intense competition and global mobility, but this also means we are living in times with more opportunities and, as such, we need to expand our horizons and have the ability to forecast and plan for jobs of the future.

We are a government that have the best interests of small business at heart, businesses which employ local people. Small businesses are the engine room of the economy and provide the bulk of employment opportunities. It is their innovative and entrepreneurial spirit which ensures the viability of our nation's economy. By ensuring that small businesses continue to have the jobs of the future, our Jobs and Small Business package will help small businesses invest and grow. We will reduce the red tape and bureaucracy that stifle so many opportunities for businesses. We want to encourage our entrepreneurs to continue to take risks and be rewarded, not punished. After all, governments do not create jobs; businesses do.

In addition, we are planning and investing in the right infrastructure around this country to ensure that business can have their goods delivered, that customers and employees can cut travel time and that there is increased productivity all around because roads are not clogged with drivers—that is, employers and employees trying to get from A to B.

Our close ties with regional neighbours, particularly our trading partners in Asia, such as China, Korea and Japan, further stipulate the need for jobs to be aligned with learning and training programs in place so students have the opportunity to obtain the jobs of their dreams. To ensure we remain a smart nation, our students must be able to learn from the best and have the opportunity to reach out to the world.

This side of the House are firmly committed in our plans to building a strong, safe and prosperous future for all Australians. This side of the House are systematically delivering opportunities at all stages of a child's life—in preschools, primary schools and secondary schools, as well as in tertiary institutions and training colleges—that provide the needed skills of prospective employees.

The coalition is delivering the opportunities to address the importance of planning for the jobs of the future. For example, from 2016, Commonwealth funding will be informed by the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability so that all students with disability are funded in the same manner, regardless of the state or territory they live in. Students with a disability will receive the extra support they need, with a record $1.3 billion being provided in 2015-16.

For those in our vocational system, the coalition will deliver a strong system that is sustainable and world-class, including cracking down on colleges that do not provide quality training. We will ensure that quality and equity is at the forefront of our higher education system so that quality is never diluted and graduates are equipped with the knowledge and skills needed for their future employment. We are the party that will ensure our schools produce bright pupils and that the best and brightest of teachers are attracted to teach them. It is the coalition that understand the importance of planning for the jobs of the future.