Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

(—) (): My question is to the Prime Minister. TAFE teachers, students and apprentices from all around the country are gathered in the gallery today for National TAFE Day. Can the Prime Minister please explain to TAFE supporters in the gallery today why he is cutting another $270 million from skills and apprenticeships in this year's budget while still giving $80 billion to big business? Will the Prime Minister reverse his opposition to Labor's plans to cover up-front fees for 100,000 TAFE places and train more Australians for well-paid, secure jobs? (Time expired)

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can inform the House that every young apprentice has aspiration, and plenty of it. And when it comes to the Labor Party's record on apprenticeships, they saw the biggest single drop in trainee numbers on record: a 22 per cent fall in their last year of office. And do you know who was responsible as the minister when 110,000 apprentices lost their positions? The Leader of the Opposition! He was the then employment minister.

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

It's a set up!

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a set up, the Prime Minister said! In the years between 2011 and 2013, the Labor Party cut incentives for apprenticeships not once, not twice, not three times, but nine times—$1.2 billion. And who can remember the VET FEE-HELP disaster, where you had funding for courses like veterinary Chinese herbal medicine, graduate community advocacy and a diploma in lifestyle consultation? They were the courses of the Labor Party.

In contrast, the Turnbull government is delivering a $1.5 billion Skilling Australians Fund and supporting 300,000 aspirational apprenticeships, while a $70 billion infrastructure rollout is looking to support apprentices all the way and the VET system is now getting going. At the end of the day, you can look at the Labor Party record, where they cut all the apprenticeships and they cut money out of the program, or, in contrast, you can see we're creating hundreds of thousands of new positions for aspirational apprentices across the country.