Celia Hammond (Curtin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business. Will the minister update the House on how the Morrison government is providing stability and certainty by supporting small business and skills development so as to remove barriers to employment and help Australians into jobs?

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I thank the member for Curtin for her question and acknowledge her passion for all things education. There are 54 schools in her electorate, a major university, 40 vocational education providers and around 27,000 small businesses, and she's passionate about all of them.

The Morrison government understands that Australians want the certainty and stability that a good job brings, and a stronger economy is the key to creating more jobs for Australians. Our economic strategy continues to see jobs growth in Australia. As at July 2019, almost 1.4 million more Australians were in jobs since the coalition government was elected in 2013. We continue to see record job growth. Total employment is at a record high, with over 12.9 million Australians employed. We have record full-time employment at nearly 8.85 million. Over 255,600 full-time jobs have been created in the past year. Australians have the confidence to enter the job market because we are creating the certainty and stability to back small and family businesses so they can unlock their potential. Just one example of this is that we've extended the instant asset write-off threshold from $25,000 to $30,000 and lifted the turnover rate to $50 million.

Australia also has a world-class tertiary education system, but we are not resting on our laurels. We want to continue to make our skills sector more responsive, more flexible and more attractive to potential students from all walks of life. To achieve this, we're investing over $500 million in measures to increase apprenticeships, promote vocational training and fill skills shortages to ensure that Australians have the real skills that they need for real careers. The Joyce review is an incredibly important review. Why are we doing this? Because we want to provide industry with a pipeline of qualified workers needed to keep our economy strong while targeting training in areas of skills demand. The government is working to ensure businesses and individuals have the skills that they need. How are we able to do this? Because we are providing certainty and stability. We understand that certainty and stability lead to jobs growth and jobs growth leads to national prosperity.