Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In my electorate of Lindsay, the pathways to education are creating bright, positive futures for our young people. It's all about ensuring that we're creating local jobs for local people; backing small business and emerging industries to create and sustain generations of local jobs; and thinking about the future, particularly in Western Sydney, with the development of the Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport. The construction of this airport will create many thousands of local jobs. We are looking at future jobs for our young people who are currently in school, particularly in science, technology, engineering and maths, and ensuring our kids are educated for those jobs of the future. This very much starts at school.

I want to ensure I'm working really hard, both in my community and also from a policy perspective, to make sure that the 300,000 people who currently commute out of Western Sydney every single day for a good job don't have to do that anymore. I did that commute into Sydney for over 10 years, and I know many people are still doing it today. I want to make sure that our young people in the future, particularly with the creation of Western Sydney airport, don't have to do that commute. I want to make sure we have a vibrant local economy and are backing our small businesses to create more jobs, because people in Western Sydney—including, I know, in my community of Lindsay—very much want to live, work and stay in the community that we all love. We don't want our kids to have to do that commute that we've all done for many years for a good job.

Our investment in skills, training and education is absolutely key to this. Many people in the jobs of the future will start getting their apprenticeships now, and there are over 2,000 apprenticeships right now in Lindsay. The additional identified skills shortage payment launched by the Morrison government last year will support up to 80,000 more apprenticeships across Australia over five years, and we want these apprentices to be supported along the way. I know I surely do in Lindsay. The Australian Apprenticeship Support Network is helping 270,000 Australian apprentices in training and their employers.

In my electorate of Lindsay, employers like Shane, who owns Emu Plains Automotive Repairs, are really keen to employ apprentices. Shane has recently taken on a young female apprentice. This particular young apprentice at Emu Plains Automotive Repairs has had her interest in mechanics unlocked, and she has strong potential for a career in mechanics in the future. This is because we are backing local small and medium-sized businesses so they can support apprentices. We're creating jobs and, importantly, changing lives.

As part of the Morrison government's considered and responsible approach, the Skills Expert Panel established last year will provide independent strategic expert advice on the implementation of the government's skill reform priorities. Our $10 million investment in the development of the Jobs and Education Data Infrastructure project will change the way we see the supply and demand of skills. Our targeted approach means that we can support the development of skills, apprenticeships and jobs where they are needed most, and we're implementing better processes and gathering better data and expert strategic advice so we can deliver more opportunities for Australians. We're making sure in Western Sydney, including my electorate of Lindsay, that we are at the front line of these opportunities. We are creating, as I said, more jobs in Western Sydney and unlocking our potential through the biggest infrastructure project that we have going on, a once-in-a-generation project: the airport. This is just one of the things that we are doing locally to back small businesses and to back our local people looking for jobs.

I'm really proud that a few weeks ago I hosted a jobs fair, Penrith Jobs Fair, with over 2,300 local jobseekers. Minister Cash came out to Penrith, and we connected with over 40 employers from across Western Sydney. One of the great things about this is that I met with a young man who's 18 and is looking for a job, and he's really interested in computer science, so we were able, at that jobs forum, to connect him with potential employers. That's what it's all about: seeing our young people having those opportunities, tapping their potential, seeing what their interest is and, most importantly, making sure that, whatever they choose to do, they have the opportunity to do that not by commuting out of the area for many years but by accessing a really good local job.

Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I first saw this motion, I thought to myself: with only five minutes, it's going to be very difficult to speak to a motion that is fairly difficult to keep within one page in nine point given how many sub-parts it has. It's a motion with three parts, and part 2 has nine sub-parts. One would think we are living through a golden era of reform when it comes to vocational education and training—there is so much that this government has to fit on one page to spell out its achievements. But this motion, more than anything else, is a classic case of 'spin over reality'. Vocational education and training is more important than ever given the challenges our economy is facing and the huge transition our economy is going through.

Young people today are going to face more careers than ever, and they're going to face the need for lifelong training in a way that earlier generations did not. What we see, however, is that vocational education and training is being gutted. The irony of this motion is that it refers to a program that, in the last budget, had its funding topped up, and this government will now continue to pat itself on the back; it cites $525 million of funding in the last budget when in fact only $70 million of that was new money. We have a government that should be placing a greater emphasis on vocational education and training; rather, it is cutting funding and spinning the existing programs that it has.

Let's look at the facts. The Australian Industry Group, an independent observer of the state of the economy in this space, says 75 per cent of businesses report that they are struggling to find the qualified workers they need. This is a parlour situation. This is a disaster for young people, who should be connected to jobs that are in existence. What that says is that there are jobs out there but young people are not being connected to them. It's a huge lost opportunity. That is not the fault of the young people; that is the fault of a training and education system that is not connecting them to existing opportunities.

We also have an economy in which two million people are underutilised. We know that the underemployment rate has been rising throughout the term of this government. It is now at over eight per cent; it is over 10 per cent in many areas. In fact, when one looks at under-utilisation—those who are unemployed and those who are underemployed—in some regional areas it is approaching 20 per cent, or one in five. This is a disaster for many people in these areas in terms of their capacity to earn a living and have a financially secure future.

What have we seen from this government? Let's look at the big picture. It's not about this government adding $70 million as a small top-up to a scheme in the last budget. Let's look in a holistic way at this government's commitment to vocational education and training. This government has cut around $3 billion from TAFE since it took office. So let's not look at one program, let's not cherry pick and let's not misrepresent through the funding allocated to one specific program. Overall, when it comes to this government, TAFE has had its investments slashed. And not only has TAFE had its investment slashed in budgets; this government doesn't even have the confidence to spend the money it has allocated. A total of $5.27 billion was budgeted for a series of apprenticeship skills and training initiatives between the 2014-15 and 2018-19 budgets but this government spent only $4.35 billion of that. That is almost $1 billion in underspends. The government will come in here and explain that 'it was so difficult, this or that was unforeseen, it's the fault of a demand driven system'. They'll always try and blame those on the other end. But we should be holding this government to account for the fact that, on its own budgeted investments, it has failed to spend almost 20 per cent of the money it has allocated.

As I've indicated, our economy is going through a transition. Young people today will need to be given skills to face a workplace in the future that we can't even envisage. This is a huge challenge and our VET system needs investments at much higher levels than this government has budgeted for. And not only that; this VET system needs money actually spent where it is budgeted for, rather than having $1 billion sitting on the table. This motion is a classic case of this government being far more about spin than reality. When you look at the VET system, it doesn't warrant a motion that takes more than five minutes to read out; it warrants real investment in budgets that reaches the kids that need training to fill the jobs they're not able to fill at the moment.

Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to be speaking after the member for Fraser to inject some reality into this debate, because the Morrison government is investing record amounts in our education, skills and training unlike the Labor Party, who presided over the greatest fall in apprenticeship numbers on record in 2012-13. When they were in government, the number of apprenticeships and trainee commencements fell by 85,000 in a single year. That is extraordinary. It's a terrible indictment on the previous Labor governments.

In comparison, our government is working hard to fix the disarray caused by Labor. For the past six years, the Liberal government has been working to repair the damage inflicted by Labor's cuts to Australia's vocational education and training sector. Labor's cuts included: cuts to the apprenticeship training fee voucher program and the shared completion incentive, cuts to the Commonwealth trade learning scholarship and apprenticeship wage top-up, cuts to incentives for employers of Australian apprentices undertaking their apprenticeships or traineeships at the certificate II level, cuts to the commencement and recommencement payments for Australian apprentices undertaking their apprenticeship at the diploma and advanced diploma level, and cuts to the completion payment for employers of existing Australian apprentices in non-skills-shortage areas. This was a cumulative $241.6 million cut to Australian apprenticeship incentives.

The good news, though, is that supporting apprenticeships and especially getting more young people into apprenticeships is an integral part of our government's plan to grow the economy and to grow jobs. Our government are getting more young Australians into jobs because we're investing in new initiatives targeted towards increasing participation in apprenticeships, including: $156.3 million for new additional identified skills shortage payments to provide incentives for employers and apprentices in areas of national skills shortage, $44 million for new streamlined incentives for Australian apprenticeships program to make it simpler and easier for employers to take on an apprentice or a trainee, another $60 million investment for a further 1,630 places by expanding the Australian apprentice wage subsidy trial—this is on top of the $393 million investment already provided every year to employers under the Australian Apprenticeships Incentives Program.

Additionally—it doesn't end there—our government have made available up to $1.5 billion in the Skilling Australians Fund over five years to help create many thousands of extra apprenticeships so Australians can get the skills they need to secure a good job and a good career.

The measures I've just outlined illustrate just some of the ways our government is restoring confidence in apprenticeships. Of course, helping Australian workers, especially our young people, develop skills makes good economic sense. The Morrison government understands that enhanced labour market productivity and increased economic investment and all of the associated benefits that come with that can only be achieved if we have a skilled workforce. For this reason, I'm so pleased our government is investing $525 million to upgrade and modernise the vocational education and training sector with our Delivering Skills for Today and Tomorrow package. This package delivers new measures supporting Australians to skill, reskill and upskill, and the additional identified skills shortage payment will boost existing incentives for areas of identified skills needs to support up to 80,000 new apprenticeships over five years.

Around this time last year, I was delighted to visit a wonderful local family business in my electorate, Claridge Crash, with the David Pisoni, South Australian Minister for Innovation and Skills, and the Honourable Michaelia Cash, Minister for Employment Skills, Small and Family Business, to talk about our plans to grow apprenticeships in South Australia. Thanks to the Morrison and Marshall Liberal governments' joint commitment to extend the Skilling Australians Fund, an additional 20,800 apprenticeships and traineeships will be created in South Australia over the next four years, helping more South Australians get the skills that they need and helping them to gain and retain a job. Similarly, I was delighted to host Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in my electorate, where we met with local builder Dave, his apprentices and Master Builders SA to discuss how our apprenticeships are helping the building industry as well. I'm delighted that we are investing so heavily in apprenticeships around the nation.

Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are 1.9 million Australians looking for more work—1.9 million Australians who are saying very clearly, 'This economy is not working for me.' And all we hear from the Liberal Party is that somehow that's Labor's fault. We deserve a higher-quality debate than that. Particularly, young Australians who are struggling to get a job in 2020 deserve a hell of a lot better than that.

We hear a lot in this place about someone called Scotty from marketing. I don't know who Scotty from marketing is, but I can tell you I'm a huge fan of Scott Cam. I love watching The Block. But as much as I love watching The Block, Channel Nine can pay Mr Cam whatever they like, but I don't know that it was smart money for this government to pay Scotty from The Block $345,000 for 15 months work. The numbers show that, despite his best efforts, the government's policy agenda did not deliver the increase in trainees and apprentices that this country desperately needs. Scotty Cam has done a lot better than me. We know that tradies are some of the best-paid people in Australia. We also know Scotty is an author. He has published a book—something that I have not achieved. His book was called Home Maintenance For Knuckleheads. When you think about training policy, you'd have to think that under this government, it's training policy for knuckleheads, because the Prime Minister has created a tradie crisis. But when you cut $3 billion from TAFE apprenticeships and traineeships, what do you expect?

There are fewer apprentices and trainees today than when the Liberals first came into office. I'll say that again: there are fewer apprentices and fewer trainees today than when the Liberals came to office more than six years ago. In fact, it's not just a few; it's 140,000 fewer apprentices and trainees than there were when they first came to office. In my state of Western Australia alone, it's 30,000. Almost 20 per cent of the drop has happened in Western Australia. That means we now have a shortage of bricklayers, a shortage of plumbers, a shortage of hairdressers, a shortage of bakers, a shortage of electricians, a shortage of mechanics, a shortage of panel beaters and, here in Australia, one of the hottest countries in the world—sadly the temperature is ever-increasing—we have a shortage of air-conditioning mechanics. We have to import air-conditioning mechanics into this country because we're not training enough of our own. I hope that this government does more on climate change and I hope that they start to take it seriously, but I think we're going to need air-conditioning mechanics for a few more years. Maybe it's time that we actually start training up more Australians to do that because, as I said, 1.9 million Australians are looking for work or looking for more work.

I love TAFE. TAFE is one of the great transformational things in our education and training system. In my electorate alone, some 14,566 students go to TAFE on a regular basis: 3,010 students go to Leederville; 1,356 students go to Mount Lawley; 1,221 students go to East Perth; and there are 8,979 enrolments at Northbridge TAFE, the biggest TAFE in Western Australia. Every single person who works at those TAFEs does an amazing job, transforming people, getting them ready to do the jobs of the future and the jobs that we need people to do right now.

But not everyone has the same approach when it comes to TAFE and making TAFE more accessible. Someone who would like to be Premier of Western Australia, Lisa Harvey, the Liberal leader in Western Australia—her singular achievement, after five years in office as a minister, was to send TAFE fees up 510 per cent for some courses. That means that young people can't even afford to get the skills they need so they can pay taxes and participate in our economy. In fact the data shows that because of Liza Harvey's policies, along with those of Colin Barnett and the WA Liberal Party, clapped on by many people in this place, there was a 24.5 per cent drop in the number of people going to TAFE—terrible! I want to commend Premier Mark McGowan for his initiative to slash TAFE fees for a range of priority courses. Fees in cybersecurity—slashed. Fees in engineering—slashed. This means that more young people in Western Australia can access the training they desperately need.

Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm glad to speak about the importance of vocational training in Australia and about TAFE in particular. I have to say that the motion itself seems at odds with what's actually going on in Australia. It seeks to superimpose a cheery picture over what in reality is a fairly bleak set of circumstances. When it refers to how the government wants to 'reform the vocational sector to meet the demands of the modern Australian economy', we can only decode that as meaning the government thinks that squeezing our TAFE system and drastically reducing the number of apprentices is just what this economy needs. That would seem bizarre, but this is the same government that reckons the way to respond to stagnant real wages, falling living standards and weak consumption is to cut penalty rates, cap public sector wages, cut public sector jobs and wage a constant war against the union movement. So, if that's your assessment of what the economy needs, then the attack on TAFE and apprenticeships starts to make perfect sense.

As the Australian Bureau of Statistics makes clear, this Liberal-National coalition is presiding over the worst wages growth on record, with wages growing at one-fifth the rate of profits. Its economic policies have doubled the national debt and lifted household debt to record levels, and there are nearly two million Australians looking for work or for more work even though in some areas there are significant skills shortages. A properly supported vocational framework would connect those two areas of need—businesses who want skilled workers and Australians who would love to be trained in the skills that would enable them to take on those jobs. What this motion doesn't acknowledge, in talking about the government's new-found enthusiasm for vocational sector reform, is that for seven years the government has actively run down the sector itself. Reform in this case is code for, 'How the hell do we glue the system back together after we have already smashed it into several pieces?'

Consider that under Labor there were never fewer than 400,000 apprentices and trainees under Labor. Today there are maybe 170,000. After seven years of so-called stable and certain government, the number of apprentices and trainees in Australia has been chopped in half. At a time of high youth unemployment, and with a government that constantly says the best support it can provide is a job, we find ourselves in a situation where Australia has a shortage of plumbers, carpenters, hairdressers and motor mechanics—and air-conditioning mechanics, apparently. It's no great mystery as to why. The biggest reason we have shortages in such basic and critical skill areas is that the government has cut $3 billion out of the TAFE system—three thousand million dollars out of our TAFE system. You can't take that much money out of TAFE and then blame young people for not being adequately trained.

I want to acknowledge the vital role that TAFE plays across the nation, including those who serve my electorate of Fremantle like the WA Maritime Centre and the Murdoch TAFE campus. At the end of last year I visited the WA Maritime Centre with Labor's deputy leader, the shadow minister for defence. Thanks to TAFE, WA is home to world-class training facilities for people seeking careers as seafarers or in the defence industry or in shipbuilding and sophisticated manufacturing. Last February I was proud to sign the pledge calling for guaranteed funding for TAFE, and I want to pay tribute to the Stop TAFE Cuts campaign and to the State Schools Teachers Union of WA for their important work in this area.

While the Morrison government has turned its back on TAFE, I want to acknowledge the supportive work of state governments in this area. The Victorian, Queensland and Western Australian governments have all realised that there's a crisis, and they've taken steps to address it. As the member for Perth pointed out, the McGowan Labor government put a freeze on all TAFE fees in 2017. This year they've cut TAFE fees in half for 34 priority courses. That's having an impact, with a 20 per cent increase in TAFE enrolments across those courses. In some areas, like cybersecurity, enrolments have increased by 85 per cent. That's what good governments do; they identify problems and they take practical action.

After seven years of this Liberal-National government, our vocational education system has taken an absolute hammering. It's sad but understandable that some Australians have lost confidence in the system or are finding themselves locked out through higher fees, course closures and even the closure of some TAFE campuses. That's what billions of dollars in cuts does, and that's why we've got a skills crisis that makes life hard for businesses and leads businesses to call for more access to temporary foreign workers. And yet, with almost two million people out of work or looking for more work, it shouldn't come to that. The truth is that TAFE can and should be an engine for opportunity and productivity in this country. Well-structured, properly resourced and high-quality vocational education helps to create jobs, boost wages and grow small business, and lets Australians of all ages, but particularly young people, to get on the path for a productive and fulfilling work life.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion by the member for Braddon, a motion which includes a list of boastful figures which self-congratulate the coalition government on its record in the vocational education sector, but the reality is that there is very little to celebrate. How can the Liberals have the hide to pat themselves on the back when over the past seven years they have stripped $3 billion—$3 billion!—from skills training, and the country has 140,000 fewer apprentices and trainees than when they came to office? That is not a record to be proud of.

In Tasmania from 2013 to 2018, a period overseen entirely by Liberal state and federal governments, 689 fewer apprentices were trained in the high-value skills that our state desperately needs. That's a 7.24 per cent drop in five years. In five years it went down. We have a chronic shortage of critical trades: carpenters, plumbers, air conditioner repairers, mechanics, chefs and hairdressers, and unacceptable unemployment and underemployment rates, especially among young people and especially in our regions. We've seen the results of these skill shortages on several major projects recently, such as the Royal Hobart Hospital upgrades—much delayed and overexpensive—and Cattle Hill Wind Farm, where interstate and overseas plasterers, plumbers and electricians have been brought in to meet the demand, too often with substandard results.

Just today, we saw reports in the Tasmania media that the Gutwein Liberal state government is testing the waters on funding a privately registered training organisation. Here we go again! That's in direct competition with TAFE Tasmania's hospitality and tourism training institution at Drysdale. Instead of providing Drysdale with the resources it needs, it's going to undermine it. I share the concerns of Tasmanian Labor leader, Rebecca White: there are too many stories of private RTOs that do not provide good-quality training or which go belly up and leave students in the lurch without getting the qualification they have been working towards. Rebecca White has free TAFE training in construction, hospitality, aged-care and disability services at the centre of the state Labor policy program. That is a state leader doing her job for young people and for jobs in Tasmania.

Employers are crying out for skilled workers in the trades, retail and hospitality sectors but simply cannot find them, leading to pressure to bring in the overseas workers. At the same time, Tasmania has the highest unemployment rate in our nation. In September last year, Tasmania's jobless rate was 6.7 per cent. And we keep talking about underemployment; it's critical. If you're working one or two days a week you can't pay your bills, and our underemployment rate was 10.6 per cent. Youth unemployment is 14.3 per cent, and it is harder for young people to find a job in Tasmania than in any other state—let alone pay the rent.

Figures released by the Productivity Commission this month show that the number of students in vocational training in Tasmania has declined overall in recent years. Government investment has been stagnant for a decade, with real growth of just three per cent since 2009. That's three per cent growth over 11 years; that is practically zero. Zero growth in 11 years: it is an absolute disgrace! Our failing TAFE system and the poor quality of our VET courses means young people are unable to explore the pathways that could provide them with a foundation on which to build their skills and help them to find new jobs in a changing economy that is resulting in the disappearance of low-skill jobs.

Sadly, the parlous situation of our national TAFE system should not be a surprise. What other result could we expect, knowing that the Liberal federal government has failed to spend $919 million of its own training budget—money that it put in its own budget it failed to spend over the past five years!

The money was there in the budget, ready to be spent, and they didn't spend $919 million. They banked it, instead of providing young people with the pathways to skills and training that they need to take part in this economy—an absolute disgrace. That's in addition to the $3 billion they cut from the system overall.

It's typical behaviour. We've seen it with the NDIS: underspending on essential services and programs and leaving Australians, particularly vulnerable Australians, worse off. It's hardly a coincidence that Australia's productivity growth, the driver of improved living standards and a key source of long-term economic and income growth, has virtually stalled under this government. They stand condemned.

Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:00