Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to wish everyone a happy TAFE Day. I come from generations of tradespeople—shipwrights, boilermakers, printers and fitters and turners—so I find one of the great privileges of being a member of parliament the opportunity is visiting TAFE campuses around our nation. My colleagues and I get to meet TAFE educators, passing on their knowledge and inspiring others. We get to watch young Australians discovering what they can do and falling in love with the passions they can take through their lives. We get to see older workers retraining for a new opportunity, finding the confidence that comes from starting something new.

I'm proud that at the next election there will be a very clear choice on TAFE: another three years of Liberal cuts to TAFE and apprenticeships or a Labor government backing public TAFE all the way. We will invest $100 million in rebuilding TAFE to renovate campuses and workshops, we'll hire more apprentices on Commonwealth projects—one in every 10 employees must be an apprentice—and we're going to waive up-front fees for 100,000 TAFE places.

I don't want us to be a nation that simply relies on importing skilled workers when we can train our own. Where a town has a TAFE, a community has hope in the future; and, when public TAFE is strong and properly funded, we'll have a highly skilled workforce earning good wages, we'll have an economy that can compete and succeed in Asia and above all we'll have an Australia where no-one gets left behind.