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

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

The government failing to prepare Australians for the jobs of the new economy.

I call upon those honourable 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—

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I start my contribution by wishing everybody a very happy National TAFE Day today. I know that many TAFE colleagues are out and about in the parliament meeting with members and senators to talk about the importance of TAFE in all of our communities.

The reason that I put this matter of public importance on the record is because, sadly, on National TAFE Day we have discovered through the release of government's federation green paper that they are giving serious consideration to abandoning any federal responsibility for vocational education and training in this country. The reality is that in an area of public policy where one would think that the national interest would require an active supportive federal government we have actually got a federal government that in their very first budget in this place decimated the budget of the skills portfolio. Secondly, they included in their Federation white paper serious consideration of throwing their hands up and saying, 'It's all too hard. We will just buck-pass it back to the states.' The result of that is the that the remaining $1.8 billion in the skills budget would be gone—absolutely gone.

This morning, with the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Canberra, we visited the Canberra Institute of Technology—a fantastic facility. I am sure it is replicated in TAFEs in many of our seats across this country. We met with apprentices who were studying in the automotive section. It was a great cross-section of apprentices who told us some fabulous personal life stories. In particular, I would report to the House that probably a third were mature-age apprentices who had had an original career and had made a decision they wanted formal qualifications and wanted to enter into a trade area. There was one young woman doing automotive and she made a plea to all of us to get out and support more women into the traditional trades and into apprenticeships. She was doing really well. This was a great opportunity. I know members do visit their TAFEs and I would encourage everyone to continue to do so.

The serious problem that TAFEs are facing across this nation is as a result of significant withdrawal of funding across conservative state governments. Indeed, we have only just recently seen the New South Wales budget. The implication that has come out of that, with the loss of jobs in the TAFE sector, is a 30,000 decrease in the number of students enrolled in TAFE as a result of what has been happening in that state alone.

It is absolutely critical at this point in time, if we do not want to lose what is a national asset, that all governments, including the federal government, get active on finding ways to support our public TAFE and also to make sure that they remain available across the nation. I noticed the member for Herbert is here paying attention to my contribution. The member for Herbert chaired with the member for Perth as co-chair and produced an excellent report on TAFE: TAFE:an Australian asseta bipartisan report. What we found in that report—I was a member of the committee—was that TAFE indeed provides education and training across the nation, in particular in what would be called thin markets, which are areas where it is not able to turn a profit for anybody else

Mostly that is in our regional and rural areas. The minister at the table, I am sure, would be well aware of that.

TAFE is actually the only serious player in town for so many of those communities. If we do not want to see rural and regional Australia slip further behind, then I think every one of us in this place—whether we are based in regional areas, as I am, or rural areas or indeed in cities—has a responsibility to ensure that TAFE continues to prosper and be the backbone of our vocational education and training system.

The other thing that we found was that there is a range of areas that are very capital intensive to provide training for. We saw an example of that this morning in the automotive industry. It costs a lot of money to put the equipment in, to keep it updated; as we know, technology across the trades is expanding at a rapid pace. The jobs of the future in the trades as much as in the ICT sector are changing at a rapid rate. And we were looking at some of the computer technology that people were being trained on for mechanical repairs only today. That is expensive investment. It is investment by governments over a long period of time. I am pleased to say that Labor at the federal level in government uses significant proportions of capital investment in the post-secondary sector to put money into TAFEs. That needs to be utilised and taken advantage of.

We need premises in place. We need them in there, getting the training. But the Abbott government has taken away $1 billion of support for apprentices. The mature apprentices we met, who quite often have to take a significant drop in their income to undertake an apprenticeship, have lost the mature age incentive payment that they previously got to help them manage the cost of doing an apprenticeship. I have to say: we are not very happy about that at all. It was a decision by the government in MYEFO last year. We need to keep apprentices training in those facilities. We have seen about a 20 per cent decrease in commencements over the last 12 months and a 20 per cent decrease in completions. How is that training people for the jobs of the future?

I also want to make the point that that capital investment is only ever going to be done by public providers to that extent. I do not want anyone to get a mistaken impression; I have met many really excellent private providers out there in the sector doing great work. But the reality is our public providers need to be the backbone of our system, and that sort of facility is really significantly important for so many communities and for their training efforts. That is another particular reason why the uniqueness of our public provider has to be supported.

The other thing I want to draw the House's attention to in the development of the new economy is that many people—we had people talking to us about it at the facility today—are coming to the understanding that they may have trained in their trade or their profession over recent decades but now the technology that is intrinsic to just about every job, no matter what job you do, is requiring them to upskill, to add to their skills base, in order to be more effective at their job. And a lot of these people are small business owners, looking to get the modern skills they need to keep their businesses flourishing. So often, TAFE is the option that allows them to access the right sort of training, and at the quality they want. So, TAFE is critically important for the upskilling effort, for the expansion and innovation in many of our small businesses across the nation.

I want to make the point, on National TAFE Day, that this is absolutely the wrong time for the federal government to even consider an option that says: 'We are going to abandon the vocational education and training sector—nothing to do with the national effort, nothing to do with national productivity, no role in national participation, nothing to say about national innovation, nothing to contribute to growth and new job opportunities in this country. The whole vocational education and training sector can just be passed back to the states and we do not have to take any responsibility.'

It is wrong to even allow it to sit out there in discussion. I think the government needs to take immediate action on the back of that federation green paper to make it clear to the over-one-million Australians who are participating in vocational education and training in any year that they are not about to abandon them. The government need to make it clear that they are not about to walk away; because people with those kinds of qualifications are, unsurprisingly, mobile. They want to move across state borders; they want to move between industries; they want to upskill and be part of the modern national economy. To do that, they need an active federal government. They need a federal government that understands the sector and they need a federal government that absolutely invests their TAFE and public providers as well, as part of that mix.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak on the third MPI debate raised by the Labor Party in the last three or four weeks. We had the member for Blaxland putting up: 'The importance of planning for the jobs of the future'. We had the Leader of the Opposition putting up: 'The government's failure to plan for the jobs of the new economy'. And now we have had the shadow minister talking about: 'The government's failure to prepare Australians for the jobs of the new economy'. It seems that in the future, in the new economy according to Labor, there will be extensive use of the 'copy' key and the 'paste' key. It seems we are coming back to the same topic time after time.

Labor seems to think it has discovered the new digital economy. It seems to think it is on to some massive new insight that our economy is transforming at an extraordinary rate. Of course our economy is transforming. According to a paper released by Deloitte recently, over five per cent of Australia's GDP, some $79 billion, can be attributed to the digital economy. They estimate that the digital economy has increased in size some 50 per cent since 2011. We are seeing a transformation in every sector.

Of course it is important that we have technology-based companies, particularly in the start-up sector, doing the best that they can. According to the OECD science, technology and innovation scorecard, some one-third of job creation in the business sector comes from young firms with fewer than 50 employees, even though they make up only 11 per cent of total employment.

So the key issue is: how do we develop and implement a plan across all of the end-to-end elements—education, supporting the start-up businesses that are so important and, most importantly, stimulating and supporting the private sector—recognising that private sector jobs are created by the private sector, not by government. It seems that Labor still clings to the fiction that government can solve everything with just more government spending.

Let us look first at education. I want to welcome Labor. They are a bit late to the party on education but it is very important that we have a set of education policies designed to recognise and respond to the transformation of our economy. On this side of the House, we have a set of policies with a very clear focus on STEM—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—subjects, which are so important. Indeed the Minister for Education highlighted some of the initiatives that we are pursuing in an answer to a question just today. We are working to change the requirements for the training of primary school teachers so that they must have a specialty in languages, in science or in maths. We are reforming the Australian curriculum to de-clutter it, to give more capacity to engage in depth on core areas such as science, maths, English and other foundation subjects. The minister mentioned that Steven Schwartz, the former vice-chancellor of Macquarie University has now been made the chairman of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority

We heard the education minister talking about the way technical education needs to be responsive to the new economy. Of course that is right. That is precisely why we have announced a pilot P-Tech school, which is designed to offer a pathway into careers in technology as a form of vocational education. That is a major commitment that has been made by the Abbott government. The education minister talked about our commitment to summer schools for STEM students, so students with the capacity and an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics can be brought together and encouraged to deepen their skills and pursue this vital inquiry. The minister mentioned that we have allocated significant funding to coding so school children can learn programming skills, which are a critical part of any modern economy. While we welcome Labor's interest in this important area, this government has a plan. We are focused on preparing people for the new economy, and there is a lot of work going on in the education portfolio.

Let us talk about start-ups, which are an absolutely critical part of a modern digital economy. There is an inexorable link between start-up companies and the digital economy. Look at Google, the world's third-largest company by market capitalisation, which has been going only 17 years. There are many stories of start-ups achieving remarkable success within a short time. The Australian company Atlassion was founded by two men, Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes, who are both now only about 35. They met at the University of New South Wales and together they founded a company with a market value of well over $3 billion, which employs some 1,000 people in Australia and around the world—high-paid, high skilled jobs.

Start-ups are key, and an important part of encouraging start-ups is having a tax framework which allows them to remunerate talented employees and attract them through employee share ownership plans, which are a standard form of remuneration used in the tech sector around the world. Yet Labor, in 2009, changed the tax law to make it fundamentally unattractive to offer or to receive options under an employee share option plan. They shifted the taxing points so the moment you would issue the options, you attracted a tax liability even though the options might prove to be worthless.

Because Labor does not understand the nature of risk, it does not understand the idea that people might be prepared to take a risk and if things come good, if the company goes well then the individual employee will share in that prosperity and in that growth. The member for Lilley unfortunately completely destroyed the attractiveness of employee share ownership plans as a tool to encourage and support start-ups. We are fixing that with legislation that has been taken through by the very energetic Minister for Small Business. That is one of the many areas in which we are working to get policies in place which support private sector businesses and particularly start-up businesses.

The third and most fundamental point, our friends on the other side of the House in their DNA do not grasp. In the modern technical digital economy as in other parts of the economy, it is the private sector that needs to generate the prosperity, the growth, the opportunity and the jobs. Labor's approach as a default is that government can and will do everything. When you look at their approach to the technology sector, their instinct is to have massive publicly funded behemoths that are designed to drive out the private sector, not to stimulate it. Labor put $10 billion into the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and $43 billion of public money into the national broadband network.

Our approach is very different. What we want to do is encourage the private sector in advanced manufacturing, in technology and in so many other areas, and that is the key focus of many of the policies that we are pursuing. The Industry Growth Centres Initiative is a $225-million policy supporting key sectors like food and agribusiness, mining equipment, technology and services, medical technologies and pharmaceuticals, advanced manufacturing, oil, gas and energy resources, which is driving action across the sectors on industry collaboration with researchers, on commercialisation, on market access and on global supply chains.

There is a tremendous change towards global supply chains. McKinsey and the Business Council of Australia put out some terrific work on this last year. They pointed out, for example, that one of Australia's largest manufacturing exporters is Boeing, which exports components made in Australia which then go to the US to become assembled into a completed aircraft. That is the future of modern manufacturing. That is something that our friends on the other side of the House seem to completely fail to understand. In all of their rhetoric about the automotive industry, for example, they do not seem to be aware of modern trends in advanced manufacturing.

This government has a whole series of policies. The $100-million Entrepreneurs' Infrastructure Program supports key issues like assisting businesses to get access to researchers to help re-engineer the operations of those businesses to develop new ideas with commercial potential. Just recently, 18 grants were issued to accelerate commercialisation. In the Manufacturing Transition Program, 19 projects received funding.

Australia has some great tech sector businesses emblematic of the modern economy: Cochlear; Atlassian; ResMed; Campaign Monitor, a young Australian company which recently raised $250 million from a US venture capital fund; seek.com.au; and REA, the online real estate portal. We need to support private sector businesses to create the jobs in the modern digital economy. We need to back that up with education and other elements of the end-to-end system. The Abbott government has a plan to do this. We are executing that plan. The future is coming. We are working to make sure that our workforce and our economy are ready for it.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Bradfield asked why we continue to raise this issue of jobs for the new economy as a matter of public importance. Unlike those on that side of the House, we think it is important. We think that preparing our workers and our workforce for the jobs of the new economy is important. We are not going to rest on our laurels as they on the other side have done. We have put out an important policy announcement—there have been a number of policy announcements by the Leader of the Opposition—to highlight how we are going to take steps to prepare our workforce for the jobs of the new economy.

I have to say that, while our policy, I think, is a very sensible and important step forward, we have seen those on the other side just ignore this issue. They were not content in their first budget to rip close to $2 billion out of skills. That is right; believe it: $2 billion out of skills. If that is not abandoning those who are looking to skill themselves up to take on the new jobs of the new economy then I do not know what is. They have ripped money out of universities. They have a plan—and they have not got their plan through yet, because Labor is standing against that plan—to charge exorbitant fees to attend universities. They have a plan to rip money out of universities. And of course we have seen them rip money out of schools. We know that young people need a good education to ensure that they can pursue further education. This side of the House will stand up for a good education. Those on the other side rip money out.

This is what they have already done, but we now know, with the release of their secret plan, that they intend to walk away from all of these areas—walk away from funding our school students, walk away from funding vocational education and walk away from funding preschool. I really wish those on the other side would pay attention to education and the importance of an early education. If they did, they would not be walking away from funding preschool. It really shows, I think, that those on that side of the House have already done enormous damage, but their secret plan will do more damage and will walk away from ensuring that we invest in our most important resource—that is, our human capital. They are ignoring this fact and continue to ignore it.

We heard the Minister for Education and Training today talk about his great digital plan. Of course, he was forced into releasing this because Labor announced a policy. The Leader of the Opposition announced an ambitious policy. What we found out in Senate estimates is that the digital technologies curriculum has been sitting on the desk of the minister for education since November 2013. That is a long time, Minister. If we are talking about coding, as the member for Bradfield is, and talking about how we prepare our young people for the jobs of the new economy, sitting on the digital technologies curriculum for—I think it is—almost two years now is appalling, absolutely appalling. It has taken Labor announcing our policy to force this minister's hand, and, in a lacklustre way, he sneaked it out of his office. This was agreed to by all the state and territory leaders, but once again he has ignored it.

Labor, as I said, have a plan in which we will ensure that we are preparing our workforce for the jobs of the new economy. But that group on the other side has no plan. I would say that the shadow minister for vocational education really highlighted the importance of investing in vocational education. It is not about abandoning the field of vocational education; it is about investment—investment in our people and investment for those jobs that come along.

On National TAFE Day, I would like to wish those on the other side a happy National TAFE Day, but I would like more to ask them to put their money where their mouth is and actually fund vocational education. Bring back the money for the trades training centres in schools because they are doing a great job in our local schools, getting vocational skills in. Bring back the money. Ensure that we are skilling apprentices. Ensure that we are supporting the workforce of the future, not continually trying to dumb down Australians, which is what their plans seem to do time and time again. Please, Member for Bradfield, take notice of this matter of public importance, because it is important, even if you do not think it is.

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

Let me say that I am absolutely delighted to be speaking on this topic. I think it is one of the most important topics that we could and should be debating here in the House. This is the third time that I have spoken on it, and I think it is a wonderful opportunity.

Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You might get it right this time. Third time lucky!

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

I think it is interesting that we hear interjections from the other side, because I have been filled with hope that maybe we might be inching our way forwards to a collective view on what we should be doing in the future to make sure that our kids have jobs—that they have good jobs, that they have an opportunity to go out there and earn and support themselves. Unfortunately, that is not a commonly held view, but it is one that I certainly am happy to advocate for because I think that the jobs of the future are critical. You will not hear me making snide remarks and asides and criticising any comments or any discussions or any debates on what is clearly a very important issue for us into the future.

What I can say is that there has been a report released recently by CEDA, the Committee for Economic Development of Australia. That was released in June, only a couple of days ago. It is titled Australia's future workforce?

One of the things that I think was disappointing about the portrayal of that was that there was a lot of focus on changes to some industries that are clearly declining here in Australia and, with getting so caught up in the negative parts of industry, we overlooked some real opportunities in there to celebrate our successes and certainly to look at what we could be doing to build that into the future.

One of the chapters of the report that particularly took my attention, and one that I am very focused on, was chapter 2.1. It is titled Australia's Shifting Economy and it was written by Tim Bradley, who is the General Manager of the Industry Economics Branch, at the Department of Industry and Science. For those who have not read this report, I really do commend it to you and ask you to have a look at it and particularly to have a look at chapter 2.1, because it is very insightful and, I think, paints a very clear picture of what has happened in the past and how we can use some of that to predict what may be about to happen in the future.

I have said in previous debates that we have to be very careful about making predictions about the jobs of the future, because we simply do not know exactly what they are. We have to put into perspective some of the opinions that have been given of the CEDA report, particularly on job losses and declining industries. What Tim Bradley says in his introduction is:

While it is easy to focus on the industries and jobs lost, there is a bigger story at play. In the decade to 2013–14, Australian manufacturing employment decreased by around 92,000 jobs. In that same decade however, employment in healthcare and social services increased by 462,000 jobs, by 314,000 jobs in professional services and by 222,000 jobs in construction.

I am not saying that job losses are okay under any circumstances, because quite clearly they are not. But what this is painting is a picture of hope that certainly there are some industries that are declining and have declined over the years but there are other industries and other jobs that are being created here. We need to look very closely at this report and what the jobs of the future will be and focus on what we can and should be doing into the future.

In the closing seconds of this debate, I would like to remind everyone of what we know already, which is that about 75 per cent of future jobs will require people to have skills in science, technology, engineering and maths. We should as a whole work together to encourage students to take up those studies in those fields so that they are well-equipped for the jobs of the future.

Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to follow the parliamentary secretary, and I do not doubt her commitment to this very important topic. I do not doubt her earnestness and her wish to grow jobs in this economy. Unfortunately, I doubt the intent of the government she is a member of. So far the government has shown an appalling record on job creation and planning for the jobs of the new economy. There can be no higher duty, other than national defence, for a federal government than to support the employment prospects of Australians.

The previous speaker picked figures and was absolutely right. Some industries will move up and some will move down, but let's look at the national figures as a whole—and they are very concerning. We have unemployment at a 12-year high. We have got record underemployment. We have got more people underemployed in terms of the percentage than during the eighties recession or the nineties recession. We have 190,000 people classified as long-term unemployed—the highest number ever. We have got 25 per cent of people who are unemployed in this country classified as long-term unemployed. That is also the highest ratio for that figure. By any measure, we have a jobs crisis in this country that is occurring under the lazy government opposite.

In my home region, we have got youth unemployment at 18.6 per cent. Just picture that for a moment. Almost one in five young people in my region who are looking for a job cannot find a job. We are facing a lost generation of young people with the enormous societal consequences that will have. The general unemployment rate in my region is over 10 per cent, so we are facing a jobs crisis. We urgently need action. We urgently need a government that is genuinely committed to growing the jobs of the future and planning and equipping job seekers with the best possible skills. We need a government that, in short, is supporting innovation, education and training, and unfortunately—despite all the rhetoric on the other side—their actions do not match their words.

Since coming to power, we have seen a $2 billion cut in support for innovation programs—and I will return to that in a minute—and we have seen a $2 billion cut in skills and training programs, including a billion-dollar cut to apprentices. The one that really sticks in my craw is the egregious cut to trade training centres. These centres were doing great work around Australia. They were doing great work in the high schools in my electorate and they have now been cut off. I have got five or six high schools that will not have the opportunity to get a trade training centre. I will note that the last one that opened—guess who opened it? Senator Arthur Sinodinos. He was very happy to go along, announce it and get a photo op in a local paper, but unfortunately he is a member of a government that is not supporting this great program.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Did he mention that?

Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He did not mention it member for Cunningham. I would have respected him more if he said, 'I'm opening this great centre, but it's the last one in your region because we have cut the funding.' But no; sadly, he did not.

We find out in the federation green paper that they have got a secret plan to cut another $1.8 billion in vocational and education training by withdrawing all federal funding to this area. It is a great tragedy, and that is why it is so important to be debating this on National TAFE Day. I say happy National TAFE Day to everyone.

Hunter TAFE in my home region is the largest regional TAFE. It has got 60,000 enrolments across 15 campuses. Unfortunately, it is under real pressure. Glendale TAFE in my electorate has had all its metal trades training centre courses stripped out even though my electorate is the centre of metal trades in the region. The member for Shortland was commenting before question time on the threat that Belmont TAFE is under, which would be a most egregious decision if that TAFE was closed because of the short-sightedness of the state New South Wales Liberal government and the federal government.

This government has an appalling record not just on training but on providing the jobs and supporting the jobs for people to come into. They killed the automotive industry—50,000 direct jobs gone and another 200,000 indirect jobs gone. They are killing the naval shipbuilding industry. We saw another 160 jobs go at Forgacs in Tomago yesterday—a tragic story. BAE in Williamstown is under threat.

This government does not care about jobs. It will mouth that it does, and I accept that individual members over there have a genuine commitment to growing jobs in this economy. Unfortunately, they are members of a government that has lost its way. They are members of a government that does not show a commitment to job creation. Unfortunately, they are not the ones who will suffer. It will be the young people in this country who will suffer. It will be the TAFE students. It will be the 18.6 per cent of young unemployed people in my region.

It is a great tragedy that we are having to have this debate. It should be a unity ticket. We should be talking about coding. We should be talking about skilling up teachers. We should be talking about venture capital. That is all in Labor's plan. Instead, we have excuses and blame shifting from the government—a government that is not genuinely committed to job creation.

Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has been a frustrating week. On Monday, we had, I think, a secret plan on education. On Tuesday, we had a secret plan on hospitals. Today, according to the member for Kingston and now the member for Charlton, we have a secret plan on jobs. Is it jobs? Yes, jobs and vocational training.

The frustrating part is that we are having a review into Federation. It is a green paper. It is actually a discussion paper. It is a process. It needs to be dealt with with state and local governments. This Federation of ours is 114 years old. It needs to be reviewed. We have structural budget deficit issues. We have massive duplications of resources occurring at all three levels of government. Our resources are finite. Hence the fact that we have the structural budget deficit. Instead of ruling things in and out and playing games, we need to have a sensible conversation between all three levels of government on a very simple concept—who does what and who pays for what. I would like to add a third—who regulates and monitors compliance.

After 23 years of employing people and bouncing around between all three levels of government in this country, I can tell you that it is tough to employ people. The topic of the debate is the government failing to prepare Australians for the jobs of the new economy. Here is a newsflash: I believe this topic should be the government failing to prepare Australians to create the jobs of the new economy. This House does not understand enough, in my humble opinion, that it is not government that creates jobs; it is today's employers who become tomorrow's small business operators and make their way through to become medium-sized and large business operators. That is hard. I do not know how to do it. I do not have the answers. I am not an educator. But we need to better target our education to foster, find and promote the entrepreneurial flair that sits inside tomorrow's small business operator.

How are we as a government trying to do that? We heard the parliamentary secretary for communications talk about employee share schemes. The reality of the changes that the former government made was that a vehicle that could be used to give ground level entry to an employee and ownership in a potential business of the future, a great transitioning tool, was taxed upon issue rather than upon redemption. Guess what? If an employee on $55,000 or $60,000 a year who is given options in a business does not have the capital to pay the capital gain on them in year 1, they will not do it. Hence the changes we have made are sensible. It was how the system was and will always be. It is how today's employees can use a tool to become tomorrow's entrepreneurs. It is a good system.

I like this term 'new economy'. A job is a job is a job. Our economy changes every day. There are opportunities every day. Our job as government is to get out of the way and allow people to take risks. This goes back to why the green paper is so important and why the monitoring and compliance side of the green paper is so important. Just like any regulatory burden you add has to be paid for by a business and is actually a disincentive, the more you can take out of the way of business the more incentive there is for it to have a go.

Among the budget initiatives is the small business package. Irrespective of what that small business is, it can take advantage of a decrease in company tax rates and instant asset write-offs. The member for Cunningham mentioned TAFE. In my former role I worked with RTOs to make our own cert III and cert IV hospitality courses that we could offer to our staff because TAFE did not fit our business model. These are all things that we should do. This is a most worthwhile debate to have. Today's employees are tomorrow's entrepreneurs, and we need to foster and inflame their passion— (Time expired)

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, rise today to speak on this matter of public importance—the government's failure to plan for the jobs of the new economy. I will open my comments by sharing an observation I have made about some of the things we have heard this week. Today I came into the chamber to prepare for a 90-second statement to hear Minister Morrison, the member for Cook, berating the Leader of the Opposition in his absence, suggesting that the shuttle bus from the school gate to Centrelink will not run under this government. I was appalled. I was absolutely offended. The member for Cook needs to know that the young people in my electorate are very much looking forward to the tour of a life in poverty that he is planning with the social services changes! He has no plans for the future of the young people in my electorate. He has no plans to train the young people in my electorate.

I will share another observation. I have spoken to many educators and students across the course of my life, having spent so much time in a place where learning occurs, and I think those opposite misunderstand the drivers for learning. They believe that competition motivates people to learn. I have always found in my life and those of my students that a clear purpose for learning generally motivates people to learn, and what we have here is a government that has no clear purpose around jobs, education or training. We know this by its actions. We know that it does not have a clear purpose that young people can latch onto, saying, 'This government understands what I need and this government has a plan for my future, and this government's going to create things in my community that will help me get to that future.' The government does not want to engage with communities like mine; it wants to punish the young people in communities like mine, and they have punished even those who are at work. There is lots of rhetoric about those who perhaps have lost their jobs, but what about those who are at work? The cuts to the apprenticeship programs are heartbreaking. The member for Cunningham and I have stood with apprentices in my electorate, and we heard from them firsthand what the Tools for Your Trade program meant for them. We heard from them firsthand that they had no intention of taking out a loan that would put them into debt so that they could continue their indenture to complete their trade.

There is a mindset that comes across the chamber that just does not seem to understand the importance of education and training, not to mention that today we had the Minister for Education and Training on his feet at question time, highly amusing me. He has appointed a new person on his curriculum review team whose first public statements were about 'back to basics', backed up by Minister Pyne today: 'We're going to do more numeracy and more literacy, with more time. We're going to do maths and science by inquiry. We're going to do code.' He did not even blush at the fact that you cannot do all those things at once. He did not even blush at the fact that you cannot create time in the curriculum out of thin air to do all of these things. He was going to do more of everything. There is no plan for education. This government's minister for education does not care about education. I have said seven times this week that, if he showed as much passion for education as he does against the CFMEU, every schoolkid in this country would have a set purpose.

There are other really important examples. The member for Kingston, who was on her feet today, came to my electorate, to the Little River Primary School, and there we met a young mother with two children who was engaged in education and training through programs set up by the former Labor government. She was standing there, trying to fight a cut to out-of-school-hours care that was being imposed on her community. She told us the story of how many cuts she had faced as a single mother in a TAFE program—slash, slash, slash, with no concern and no care.

This government needs to get serious. This government needs to get to work. It needs to get a purpose. It needs to think about jobs of the future. It needs to identify the disruptors. It needs to do some work. Its new paper just suggests pushing that work onto somebody else, whether it be states, families or the individual.

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

Talking about jobs, I was thinking earlier of a children's nursery rhyme which I am sure you have heard, Deputy Speaker. I am sure most people in the chamber would have heard the rhyme about the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. Wouldn't we love it if there were some butchers and some bakers—the Greens are not here; otherwise there might be some candlestick makers—on the other side? What do we have on the other side? We do not have the butcher; we have the union official. We do not have the baker; we have the political staffer. We do not have the candlestick maker; we have the lawyer. There is nothing wrong with those three professions, but wouldn't it be lovely to have a bit of diversity? Wouldn't it be lovely to have a butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker instead of the union official, the political staffer and the lawyer? That would help them have a bit of creative thought about new jobs and creating the jobs of the future.

The new jobs of the future are important, as history has shown. If we go back 100 years, there were no jobs in our economy that would have had anything to do with electricity. Electricity was being invented; it was a new concept. If we go back 20 or 30 years, there were no jobs that had anything to do with personal computers. If we go back just 15 or so years, there were not that many jobs that had anything to do with the internet. So jobs disappear, but jobs are created. How we prepare our students and incentivise our private sector today for the jobs of the future is very important. The other thing is that every student now at school will probably have four to five different careers over their life. No, they will not go from being a union official to being a staffer to being an MP. Those careers will transcend lots of different things.

So how do we prepare the education system and our private sector for these jobs? Unfortunately, it does not come from the 'in the box' thinking we get from the other side, where it is all about regulation and government solutions. Someone mentioned the curriculum earlier. It is not about content. It is not necessarily about teaching our students content all the time. I know a lot of teachers, and what we are doing with the new curriculum is not about what teachers teach students; it is about how we teach our students and our young people, because content can quickly become superseded and irrelevant. So we want to teach our students and our children about critical thinking. We want to teach them about problem solving. We want teachers who are delivering their content in an array of different ways, whether it be auditory, for the students who like to hear things; visual, for the student who is visual and likes to see how things are happening; or kinaesthetic, for students who just have to be doing things physically. So this is what we are about. We are about the fact that we want to engage our young students and our children and we want to teach them skills. It is not about content or regulation; it is about teaching them to be thinkers, and that is what we are doing.

Of course, we want to encourage private enterprise and business people to be involved in the jobs of the new economy. Others have mentioned the employee share ownership plan that was created by the previous government. What they did by killing off entrepreneurs in this country was just outrageous. As I think an earlier speaker suggested, we do not know what the jobs of the future are. Government does not know what the jobs of the future are. But we want to encourage our entrepreneurs, we want to encourage our private sector, to have a go because they will find out and they will fulfil the needs and wants that are created as our community and society changes.

Again, this is not about regulation. This government is not about regulating job creation; we are about liberating the private sector and they will do what they do best—they will create the jobs and the wealth that this country needs.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, as we have heard, is National TAFE Day. I want to take a moment to recognise all of the hardworking teachers who work in our TAFE sector. These are proud AEU members—that is right, they are members of a union—and they have worked really hard for many decades to ensure that our young people or people looking to upskill, to transfer careers, get the quality education that they need. It has been hard for a lot of people who have worked in TAFE over the last couple of years. There have been some massive cuts and attacks on people working in TAFE. Today I want to acknowledge that, despite the challenges, these good people, these great teachers, are still committed to TAFE and they are still going to work every day to ensure that people have the opportunity to get a vocational education.

In my state of Victoria the attacks by the former Liberal-National government have been savage. They have completely smashed TAFE in the state of Victoria, particularly in regional areas. We have seen in areas like my own electorate of Bendigo campuses close and courses disappear—fundamental courses that you would think would never disappear such as cabinet making, construction and bricklaying, and automotive courses. Do you know why? Because the former government changed the funding formula and said that courses need to turn a profit; they need to have at least 30 people in the classroom before the course can be run. That argument, like the current argument, was that they needed to be put to the market and they needed to turn a profit. In some parts of regional Australia they simply do not have that many students. The changes that have occurred in our TAFE sector have disproportionately affected people in regional areas. They have meant that those young people needing skills have to travel further. An example from my electorate concerns apprentices who work at Barker Trailers. They have to travel an hour and a half to get to their course at TAFE—an hour and a half because their campus closed. The boss and the company have done the right thing—they hire a bus to drive their apprentices across the country so that they can get the TAFE experience they need for their leadership.

This government's attacks on the VET sector have compounded the problems that we have in our state-based TAFE sector. There are cuts to the VET program, there are cuts to Tools for Your Trade, there are cuts to apprenticeships, there are cuts to skills—this is not regulation; this is purely a matter of funding. This government has cut from the VET sector, making it almost impossible for young people to get the skills they need for the jobs of the future. This MPI is important because not only do the government have to put money back into TAFE and money back into VET and money back into the regions to ensure that we are skilling up young people for the jobs that exist today but also they are denying the opportunity for businesses to work with a functioning VET sector to develop the jobs of the future.

I still have a very strong manufacturing area in my region, and when I meet with the Bendigo Manufacturing Group and ask the simple question, 'What do you most need from the federal government?', they say 'Support with recruiting young people.' They need young people with the skills that they need for future careers and for the jobs for today. One job I am talking about is pattern making. The old school pattern maker might have used a pencil and paper. Todays pattern maker uses a computer—they use coding and programs. They are looking for the TAFE courses where they can train a young person to do a practical, skilled job on a computer. The employer is now looking to bring people over here on 457 visas because there just are not the people trained locally. The reason is not because we do not have any young people who want to go into these jobs but because the TAFEs do not have the courses and this government has failed to invest to help the VET sector run these courses.

Another example in my electorate is Jimmy Possum, a boutique furniture maker. They have a high number of adult apprentices as well as new apprentices. This government's cuts to the adult apprenticeship program mean that they cannot cross-skill. This government does not understand what we need to do to help create the jobs for the future because it is not investing in the first steps to skill up the work force and to provide the skills for the jobs of the future.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wholeheartedly thank the member for Cunningham for raising today's MPI, on the government's failure to prepare Australians for the jobs of the new economy. I see the member for Cunningham is leaving the chamber. I served on the education committee with her in the first term of this parliament and I know that her passion for education is genuine. But, as we just heard from the member for Bendigo, it is all about the AEU. She let that cat out of the bag—the process is all about the AEU. I did meet with the AEU today, she will be pleased to know, and I heard their stories about TAFE particularly in my electorate, with Polytechnic West. I know you, Mr Deputy Speaker Randall, are a former teacher, a proud educator, and you still spend plenty of time educating people in your electorate when you go doorknocking.

This discussion gives me the opportunity to highlight all the great things the coalition government is doing to prepare all Australians for the jobs of the new economy. The reason we have to have a new economy, as described by the member for Cunningham, is that the previous government spent six years wrecking the old economy—they absolutely ruined it. I am glad that the member for Cunningham has realised that there is a need for a new economy, because they spent six years destroying the previous economy. Every member on this side of the House, like every member of the public, knows the mantra: 'A vote for Labor is a vote for waste and economic disaster.' The former Labor government, Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, proved that mantra. Colleagues, I was bemused when I was advised of today's MPI topic.

Anyone with an ounce of economic know-how would be able to make the correlation between policies which encourage innovation, a strong economy and strong job growth. But, as we all know, those opposite cannot make that correlation, let alone figure out that it is probably not the best idea to talk about jobs, when under those opposite youth unemployment in December 2008 was 13.6 per cent and they managed to drive it up in 2012 to 17.3 per cent. Those opposite have never had a plan for anything, let alone how to boost employment. I am sure, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you would agree with me that over the last three weeks we have seen ample evidence on the ABC that they had no plans; they only focused on themselves. As former Prime Minister Gillard said, they lost their way. They certainly did lose their way and they destroyed the economy along the way.

Unlike those opposite, the coalition has a plan to create new jobs, drive innovation and support businesses. It is a plan that is working. Unlike the economic disaster and job-destroying disaster that those opposite created for this country, this coalition government, since the beginning of the year, has created over 111,000 new jobs, or more than 22,000 new jobs per month. The labour market has also continued to perform strongly in the first five months of 2015, after a strong 2014 with a jobs growth of nearly 4000 a week, which is quadruple the rate seen in 2013. In the 20 months since the coalition formed government, well over a quarter of a million jobs have been created. I think the numbers speak for themselves, but to ensure that the member for Cunningham and her colleagues understand just how it happened, I will explain it: it is all about good policies.

I know you are a bit dumbfounded because you are yet to create even one good policy of your own, but here are a few of ours that are preparing Australians for jobs in the new economy the coalition is creating. We are investing $2.2 billion in industry programs across the forward estimates with a $400 million competitiveness agenda, which is a core business focused element of the government's broader economic action strategy. The agenda sets out clear ambitions that Australia must pursue: a lower-cost business friendly environment with less regulation, lower taxes and more competitive markets. We heard the same sentiment eloquently put by the member for Reid. The agenda also works to develop a more skilled labour force, better economic infrastructure and an industry policy fostering innovation and entrepreneurship. We heard from previous speakers from the other side how the coalition destroys things, but if we go back to 2007 there was a program run by the coalition called the Business Ready program, which made loans to fledgling businesses to create jobs. As soon as the Labor Party came in, they shut it down. I saw four industries in my electorate head overseas for offshore funding. This is about the coalition getting on with the job of creating a new economy, as the member for Cunningham said.