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

I move:

That this House calls on the Government to:

(1) acknowledge that:

(a)the drop in apprentices currently in training from 417,700 in September 2013 to 319,700 in March 2015 will impact on the future availability of skilled workers in Australia; and

(b)apprenticeship commencements and completions are down approximately 20 per cent for the 12 months to 31 December 2014;

(2) recognise that the $1 billion in cuts to apprenticeship support, including Tools For Your Trade payments and mentoring and access programs, have had an impact on apprentice numbers;

(3) implement strategies as a matter of urgency to encourage more apprentices into training to prevent skills shortages in the future; and

(4) invest in skills and training young Australians to ensure that Australia does not have to rely heavily on Temporary Work (Skilled) visas (subclass 457) resulting from a lack of investment in skills and training.

I have to bring to the House's attention—and this is the reason why I put this notice of motion on the Notice Papera fairly dramatic recent release of figures on apprentice and trainee numbers in this country. In particular, I want to outline for people how the impact on apprentice and trainee numbers has been affected by government decision making and put a very strong call out to the government to reconsider what they are doing in this space.

First of all, what is the situation we find ourselves in? The National Centre for Vocational Education Research, NCVER, which is our premier data collection and analysis body in this sector, on Friday a week ago released its report Australian vocational education and training statistics: apprentices and trainees 2015—March quarter

What this report told us was that, since the government has been elected, nearly 100,000 apprentices have been lost in that time period.

Government Member:

A government member interjecting—

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

I have to say: I would not go to what the rates of loss were previously, because this is an unprecedented decrease in the number of apprentices and trainees. In particular, I would point out that the time period that I am talking about covers from the election of the government—that is, the September 2013 numbers, which were 417,700 in training. For the March quarter of this year, that has dropped to 319,700. That is almost a quarter of the number of apprentices and trainees in training that have been lost. And the reason that this is such a significant and indeed critical issue for both our economy and our communities is that that means that we are not putting in place the next pipeline of skilled people to take on the jobs that are emerging—and I am sure people in this house would know exactly what it is like trying to get a plumber or a tiler in the current environment. They are in very short supply, and we need to be training young people in order to meet those skills shortages. I of course would point out that apprentices and trainees cover a wide range of employment areas from hairdressing, plumbing, tiling to construction but also across areas where the trainees operate, in particular, in the services sector. And so we need to be getting the balance right to get the next generation trained.

The other reason it is so important to our communities is that we have this persistent high youth unemployment and, in particular, for many of our regional and rural areas. One of the most effective and important pathways for young people to get a start in the employment market is through the apprenticeship and traineeship system. I would call on Minister Birmingham to have a very urgent look at these figures and to go into bat for some additional funding. His portfolio has suffered a billion dollar cut in programs to support apprentices. I am sure members opposite are going to talk all about their new Australian apprenticeship network system and I would point out to them: it will replace the old apprenticeship centres and it will replace them with $10 million a year less than they previously had.

The government is also asking the centres to do mentoring, to do job matching—jobs that were not done previously by the apprenticeship centres but under specific funded programs, which were cut. So not only are the networks having to do more work; they are having to do it with less money at a time when clearly there is a need to be getting behind the apprenticeship system and our young people getting that chance.

The Tools for Your Trade was cut—I hear complaints on this all over the place. There is a very low uptake of the trade support loans—only about 25,000 at last count, out of over 300,000 apprentices in training. So there is a real problem out there, and we need to take it seriously and take urgent action. The minister needs to give this his urgent attention. I have to say I have not heard him speak on apprentices and trainees at all. The government has taken its eye off the ball. If 'Sticking to Our Plan', which was the brochure that recently came out, is accurate, it is actually sticking it to apprentices. We need to do a much better job than that for our young people.

Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much. I am happy to second this motion. I am glad the member for Cunningham brought it up. I will back the member for Cunningham in being very passionate in relation to apprentices and vocational education and training.

By and large, apprentices are employed by small businesses, and the area I would like to concentrate on is the area of construction and building in my city. The tender process done by governments has a lot to answer for in this space. We see governments of all shapes and sizes making these tenders bigger and bigger. Tier 1 tenderers no longer employ tradespeople—there is provision in there for training, but they will do anything which resembles training. They do not do apprenticeships anymore. They do not like doing apprenticeships. What we should be doing in this space is making sure that these things do turn over and that their subcontractors are actually employing apprentices–which leads me to another area which I will cover very shortly.

The problem we have with the money that is still being still spent on training is that that training is being done in the workplace. Health and safety training and other sorts of formal training that are done in-house, where they can be, for the small group of people that are actually there. It does not have the same impact as what we used to see, where a building site would go up or something would be built and you would have your tier 1 contactor, your lead contractor, with all your subcontractors there—and you would have a number of apprentices there.

What I would really like to see is pressure being put on the tier 1 contractors to employ subcontractors who do employ apprentices. We have group training organisations in Townsville like TORGAS who have parents coming to them and saying, 'My son or daughter will work for nothing'. It is not about wages. It is not about junior wages or mature apprenticeship wages; this is about people getting an opportunity. On the big government jobs where the money used to wash through our economy two, three and four times, more and more we are now seeing it wash through only once.

There are two jobs in Townsville at the moment which are up for grabs—one at the university and one at the RAAF base. We are seeing the tier one contractors win those, as you would always expect—and I still see that as being wrong, because the money and profits do not stay in our community. The government's infrastructure is not just about providing a building or providing a road; it is about facilitating trade and making sure our community is growing. What we are seeing at the moment is that we are getting the nice piece of infrastructure, but the profit is exiting the stage—and we are not seeing any benefit from that.

Too often we are seeing these tier 1 contractors sign up subcontractors who have enterprise bargaining agreements with the CFMEU, and they are not employing locals who have apprentices. I am talking about Townsville at the moment and I am talking about recent history. What we are seeing is groups come up—fly-in fly-out contractors—where the locals cannot compete and are not getting a job. We are seeing the opportunity for premises in my city completely disappear. There are two jobs in Townsville at moment and we are seeing local guys who have up to a dozen apprentices in line for these jobs—they know what the jobs cost and what the profit margins are—and they are being told that they are going to miss out. Whether it comes to plumbers, builders, concreters or metalworkers—that is what it goes to.

When you have an organisation, like TORGAS for example, that wants to place its apprentices, they cannot have these apprentices shifting all around the country from job to job. They must get work on these local projects. I think there is an onus on all governments to ensure that, because if we spend this money and do not get apprenticeships and the next generation of tradespeople coming through, then we as a government and as a parliament have failed. That is the real shame here.

There is an article in The Australian today about house prices going up because you cannot get a builder—because we cannot get these kids onto jobs. It goes all the way through. I know that the part I am looking at is a very thin slice of the entire vocational education training market. There are things that we are trying to do here, in this space—and I think Simon Birmingham is working very hard trying to get the right result. But we as a government and as a parliament must look towards our local councils and get back to the way things used to be done—more and more locally. I am talking about regional economies like the one I am so intimately involved in. I see a series of industries in my city under real pressure at the moment and I think it is something that we are going to be very sad about in the very near future. I back the member who brought this motion forward and I think it is a very timely item.

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support the motion of the shadow minister for vocational education, the member for Cunningham, and commend her for highlighting these important issues. This motion goes right to the heart of this cruel government's cuts and how they have impacted on the training opportunities, and the subsequent future employment opportunities, for our young people. Compounding this situation is the fact that this government has no new ideas for training young people for the jobs of the future.

Firstly and most alarmingly, under this government we have seen a drop of nearly 100,000 in the number of apprentices in training. This major drop will be felt particularly severely in regional areas—where unemployment is consistently higher than in the cities and where youth unemployment is always high. The Abbott government needs to implement policies that actually help apprentices and not cut every bit of funding available. They should be focused on training a skilled workforce for the future.

It is also a great concern that apprenticeship commencements and completions are down approximately 20 per cent for the 12 months to 31 December 2014, a massive reduction. This reflects the government's lack of support and lack of incentives to ensure that apprentices are able to complete their training. It is appalling that there has not been one policy put forward by the Abbott government that increases investment in apprentices to help them start and complete an apprenticeship.

We have just seen the second anniversary of the Abbott government. In that time we have seen so many harsh cuts to programs and services. In terms of training, we have seen $2 billion in cuts to skills funding. This government's relentless attack on the training of tomorrow's apprentices began with the first budget and has just continued at every opportunity it has. We have seen it make $1 billion in cuts to apprenticeship programs. We have seen it replace apprentice support with apprentice debt by abolishing the Tools for Your Trade program. We have had a rebadging and cutting of funding to the Australian Apprenticeships Centres, along with the abolition of the Joint Group Training Program. The government has also cut support for adult apprentices, and this is particularly cruel in our current economic situation, in which many industries are transitioning and often older workers require retraining. The fact is that we should be investing in training the workforce of the future, not cutting every program that helps them train and helps people enter or re-enter the workforce.

Two years of the Abbott government has meant a decrease in training for Australians. In particular, young Australians are paying the price, especially when it comes to TAFE cuts. At both a state and a federal level, the cuts to TAFE have been extremely harsh. Just yesterday it was reported that leaked cabinet documents from the New South Wales Liberal-National government reveal that they want to sell off 27 TAFE sites. The documents showed that in 21 regional towns TAFE will be closed or reduced through a partial sale. This is a disgrace. For the New South Wales North Coast and my electorate, this includes the full sale of the Murwillumbah TAFE and also, nearby, a partial sale of the Ballina campus. This is outrageous. I would especially like to condemn the North Coast Nationals for these closures. It shows yet again that in regional and rural areas the Nationals just cannot be trusted. This is their plan to close the TAFEs at Murwillumbah and Ballina. It is a disgrace. The fact is that TAFE plays an important role in our towns, and TAFE means so many local students can access the education and skills they need. Often TAFE provides courses no private provider would deliver. On top of the TAFE closures, it was also reported recently that North Coast TAFE will be restructured and almost 200 jobs will be redefined. Reportedly, up to 60 of these positions will simply disappear and the remaining ones will have reduced conditions on hours and remuneration, another really bad blow for TAFE on the North Coast.

We also heard last week that the Abbott government is looking at a takeover of vocational education, including TAFE. This will just mean more cuts; that is all. In contrast to all the Abbott government's cuts, Labor is committed to supporting TAFE. We understand how important it is for training, and we will make skills and training a national priority. We have a very proud history in this area. Under the previous Labor government, the number of people participating in government funded training grew from 1.2 million in 2007 to 1.5 million in 2013. A Labor government will back TAFE by guaranteeing that a portion of government funding for vocational education is dedicated to public TAFE.

So only Labor really understands the vital role that TAFE plays. On the North Coast, we are very pleased that the shadow minister will be visiting this area very soon, later this month, and she will be talking firsthand to many people who have been severely impacted by the Abbott government's harsh policies when it comes to vocational education and training.

The fact is that our economy has been damaged by the Liberals' and Nationals' $2 billion cut to TAFE and vocational education. In contrast to all this, Labor is the party that believes in investing and training. Labor is backing TAFE. We have said that on many occasions. We know how important TAFE is for training, particularly for our young people for the future. We also believe that every Australian, young or old, whether they live in the city or in the bush, has an equal right to share in the jobs and opportunities of the future, and these cuts that I have outlined have particularly hurt those people in regional and rural areas, particularly our young people, who are desperate to get effective training and access decent education systems. I condemn this government—I particularly condemn the National Party—for its ongoing cuts to regional and rural Australia.

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Cunningham for her concern about apprenticeships. I think she is quite right to raise this as an important issue, a critical issue and one that all Australians should be concerned about, because the truth of the matter is that we know we have demand outstripping supply for many trade apprenticeships in particular and we know that this issue has been with us for some time and needs to be addressed. I will talk a little about some of the things the government is doing to address it.

The member for Cunningham talked about some research done by the NCVER. I think it is very good research. I have stayed across it for quite some time, because this is an issue of such importance to my electorate. I went back to a report that they published in 2014 to see what had happened over time in terms of apprenticeships. I was particularly interested in the first chart, figure 1, of the 2014 NCVER report on apprenticeships which looked at commencements.

I was astounded to see that, towards the end of 2007, apprenticeship commencements had reached about 22,000 a month; however, suddenly, just about the time that the Labor government got into power, they collapsed. By mid-2009, the number was closer to 17,000. So we saw very soon after Labor got into power a sharp reduction in the number of commencements—

Opposition Member:

An opposition member interjecting—

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will come back to that in a moment—so it is very clear that those opposite preach about this issue but understand very little about how to achieve it.

When we go to completion rates, we see a similarly sobering picture. I go to figure 2 of that very same report and we see that, between 2008 and 2012, those opposite did not manage to get completion rates above 50 per cent in any one year for trade apprentices. This was a disaster, and meanwhile they were preaching to every Australian that they needed to go to university. Let me tell you: the apprentices and the tradies in my electorate were insulted by your absolute obsession to focus on getting people to university. I went to university—I was very lucky to and I am delighted that I did go to university, but not every Australian needs to go to university to earn a good income and have a great job. Those opposite never understood this.

The data speaks for itself. What we find beneath the surface—they talk about cuts. Under Labor, they cut more than $1 billion from apprenticeships between the 2011-12 budget and the 2013 federal election—$1 billion in cuts, including millions of dollars in incentives taken out overnight on the eve of the 2013 election. This was their tactic: a billion dollars lost. We saw a collapse in apprenticeship completions, as I said; however, right towards the end of their time in government, the apprenticeship commencements collapsed again. This was directly as a result of their cuts in funding to this very important part of what goes on in all of our electorates.

Under the coalition we have seen $6 billion this year go to vocational educational training through funding to the states and territories to support their training systems and TAFE—$1.8 billion, up to 250,000 training places funded through the $664 million Industry Skills Funds; and student loans for VET students—$1.76 billion. These are massively important investments in our future and they are turning around a ship which those opposite came very, very close to completely sinking.

In my electorate, this is an all-important issue and I have a large number of tradies and apprentices. I was delighted that the Assistant Minister for Education and Training, Simon Birmingham, came to my electorate recently. He met with TAFE students, with Marty Burgess, the faculty director for trades and technology in Goulburn, and he saw the very good work that is going on by this government in my region. We are turning around a ship—a ship that was almost sunk by those opposite. This is a critical issue for Australia and my electorate.

Debate adjourned.