Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes that the Government:

(1) has damaged and neglected Australia's vocational education and training system, cutting over $3 billion from TAFE and training;

(2) is presiding over a disastrous decline in apprenticeships and traineeships; and

(3) is failing to work with employers, unions and TAFEs to rebuild Australia's world-class vocational education system".

The National Skills Commissioner Bill 2020 establishes a new statutory office, the National Skills Commissioner, responsible for advising government on trends in the workplace. This office was proposed by the Joyce review into vocational education and training, which was released last year. The Skills Commissioner would be supported by employees in the Department of Education, Skills and Employment and would function as the head of the National Skills Commission in that department. The Skills Commissioner would also be charged with providing public information on these matters as well as annual reports on current, emerging and future skills needs.

Of course Labor is not going to oppose this bill, so far as it goes. The Skills Commissioner will offer useful information to policymakers in an area that is very significant for our nation and where there has been significant policy failure in recent years. Of course Labor understands the importance of having evidence about skills needs and taking expert advice in education, training and skills. In fact, when Labor was last in government, we established Skills Australia in 2008. We set up Skills Australia, and in 2011 Skills Australia became the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency. That agency analysed and reported on Australia's workplace development needs, helped to forecast skills shortages and suggested ways to fill them. Some of the saddest words in political life are 'I told you so'. We actually set this agency up in 2008, essentially to do what's being expected of the new National Skills Commission. Sadly, in 2014, when Tony Abbott became Prime Minister, one of the first things the Liberal Party did was abolish the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency. When the coalition made that decision, we raised our concerns and we emphasised what important work the agency was doing. The member for Cunningham, the then shadow minister for vocational education, spoke of the 'critical, strategic significance of the work performed by AWPA'. She said that she wanted an assurance that 'the rigour and independence of this work is not lost when the tasks are taken into the department'.

As I said, some of the saddest words in public life are 'I told you so'. Labor warned against what was done in 2014, but, of course, we're happy that the government has finally seen the error of its ways and has gone back to a system where we have, hopefully, some more independent advice in this area. It's taken the coalition six years to understand this and to rebuild a small part of what it previously destroyed. Even then, this office will still be in the same department, so, basically, as far as we can tell it's the same people doing the same functions as were being done by the department. There is no real independence or a genuine partnership here with business, with state or territory governments, with unions or with education providers. Sadly, it seems that at this point—I hope I'm proved wrong on this one—this is once again a rebranding exercise, an effort to be seen to do something. But it is better than nothing and we won't oppose the bill.

This is, I suppose you would say, a minute change, given the scale of the challenge that is ahead of us. The vocational education system has seen billions cut from it and all sorts of retrograde action. It would be absolutely ripe for major change, rather than this minute change. This is even more necessary now that we have entered our first recession in a generation. It's always better to have more information rather than less. But you can't keep taking money out of the vocational education sector, year after year, and expect to see improvements. You can't systematically underfund vocational education and then ask the sector to meet the complex and evolving skills challenges that we face. But that's exactly what this government has been doing. The government has spent seven years cutting funding to TAFE and training and, on top of cutting funding to TAFE and training, even underspending the funding that it has allocated to the sector. It's spent seven years ignoring the vital role that TAFE plays in the growth of our economy and the growth of our young people.

Since coming to office in 2013, the Liberal and National parties have cut $3 billion from TAFE and training, and, as we learnt earlier this year, that $3 billion cut comes on top of nearly a billion dollars that has been budgeted for the system but was never spent—a $3 billion cut and a $1 billion underspend. These are enormous figures and the consequences for our students and for employers and industry have been dire. Every time this government cuts funding to TAFE and training, we see fewer qualified graduates and we see falling performance across the sector. In fact, even before the recession hit, we had more people dropping out of courses than completing them. We had TAFE campuses falling apart, right across the country. We had state governments closing campuses and ending courses. Then we had a federal government that had a billion dollars sitting around that they'd budgeted for the sector and nevertheless refused to spend.

Before COVID-19 hit, there was a mess in vocational education and training. It was already a serious problem holding our country back. In fact, before COVID-19 three-quarters of Australian businesses were struggling to find the skilled workers they needed to expand and grow, three-quarters of businesses wanted to be employing Australians but couldn't find the qualified workers they needed. That's when we had close to two million Australians unemployed or underemployed already. Now that we are in a recession, that problem has turned into a crisis. That mess is a genuine national crisis.

Nowhere is this more important than in the collapse in apprenticeship numbers. Even before the recent shutdowns, the recent hit on our economy, Australia had lost 140,000 apprentices and trainees since those opposite came to power. Now, according to new modelling that we've had from the National Australian Apprenticeships Association, we're set to lose another 100,000 by the end of the year. So if the Prime Minister does nothing, if he lets the training pipeline collapse without federal support, we are looking at losing a generation of apprentices and trainees.

It's already happening. Between January and April this year there was a 73 per cent drop in advertisements for apprenticeships, in apprentice job ads. We know from past recessions that a five per cent increase in unemployment results in a 30 per cent decrease in apprentice commencements. That is a disaster for young Australians and it would reverberate throughout our economy for decades. It's all very well to talk about construction projects and renovations, but you need tradies and apprentices to build them.

What's the Prime Minister's response to this crisis? We heard it at the National Press Club just last month. There was all the hype leading up to this Press Club address. It was going to be the government's opportunity to lay out their vision for apprentices and trainees. Instead, what we got was another exercise in marketing and spin. The Prime Minister's so-called JobMaker scheme involves no new funding, no detail and no time line. In fact, outside of a few perfectly pleasant-sounding statements, the speech involved nothing new, no substance at all. There's nothing there. It's a phoney response to a serious problem. It's certainly not enough to address the crisis in apprentice numbers or to revive the TAFE system.

We are happy to support sensible legislation in this area. We're happy to support this bill as far as it goes. But, truly, as a nation we need to do so much more. We need to be so much more ambitious than this tweak that we're discussing today, and we need to offer the sector much more than rhetoric. We need to offer apprentices who are facing losing their jobs so much more than the rhetoric that the government's got on offer. We are experiencing one of the most significant economic transformations in our lifetime. A response to these challenges can either reduce the pain and the depth of this recession or shape a country that will see a longer, deeper recession and more long-term unemployment. The decisions that we're making today will shape our nation for decades to come.

We've got really important choices to make as we go forward. We've got the highest level of unemployment in decades. You would think that a well-funded, functioning vocational education sector would be more important than ever. But, basically, no matter how they dress it up with measures like these today, the government's just offering more of the same. Their track record is clear. If we continue down this road, with this history of cuts and neglect, the effects will be devastating for the individuals who will miss out. Those people who should have had the chance of being trained in a trade that would have given them a secure income for years or decades to come will miss out. It's devastating for them. But it's also such a problem for our economy, for our nation, long term.

Really, if we want a strong recovery we have to invest now in giving people as individuals the tools to work their way out of unemployment. We have to give our nation the tools it needs to work its way out of recession. Unlike those opposite, we believe that investing in education and training is an investment in the future of our people and the future of our economy. It's an investment in, not a burden on, our national prosperity. We need better workplace information and some forecasting looking at where the skills gaps are going to be—of course we do. By the way, that's why we set up the agencies we set up when we were in government—the ones that Tony Abbott, as Prime Minister, got rid of. More urgently, we need the resources and the will to deliver meaningful training at this time.

This is a government without a plan for education or a plan for training and with no plan for Australia's future or for economic recovery. We won't oppose this bill, but the changes here do little to address the enormous problems facing our skills and training system. If we want to save a generation of lost apprentices, help Australians get back to work and accelerate our recovery, we need to do much, much more.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Sydney has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I'll state the question in the form, 'That the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question'.

Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We need to have a real debate in this country about how we ensure that learners in the VET system are work ready and future ready. We know that this government is not committed to having a conversation about future-ready workers, but we have to do it. We have to think about how we can build a modern, broad based economy with a serious industry policy. We have to ensure that, as we move forward from the health crisis that we've been through, we leave no-one behind. We need to prepare Australians across all industries to learn the skills of a modern, environmentally friendly economy. This bill before us today, the National Skills Commissioner Bill 2020, does not do that.

As the shadow minister and the member for Sydney has said, Labor will support this bill because we guess it's better than nothing. If you read the title of this bill you would think, perhaps, that a National Skills Commissioner would be a powerful driver of skills reform in Australia, but, sadly, it's not. But that's what we need, and we need a driver of skills reform as part of the debate about how we can move forward through this recession but also how we can make sure that Australia's future generations are work-ready and future-ready. Sadly, at the moment, they're not.

This isn't a crisis that we've come to just because of COVID-19. Before COVID-19 and its impacts, three-quarters of Australian businesses were struggling to find the qualified workers they needed in order to expand and to grow. Last time I went to a meeting of the South East Melbourne Manufacturers Alliance, I was talking to members who couldn't find qualified plumbers for their businesses. They couldn't find qualified plumbers in south-east Melbourne! The lack of work-ready and skill-ready workers is not a crisis that has occurred because of COVID-19. It's something that this Liberal-National government has presided over for six years. And it has not just presided over it; it has contributed to it with its massive cuts to funding for skills, education and training. There were 140,000 apprentices lost under this government, and now we hear, from modelling from the National Australian Apprenticeships Association, that we could be set to lose another 100,000 apprentices by the end of the year.

We can't afford to have this in Australia. We can't afford to have a generation of people who should be entering the workforce missing out. We can't afford to have an older generation who have lost their jobs during this pandemic unable to get the skills and retraining they need to get another job. We can't afford it for the economy, and we can't afford it for the sort of community, the sort of country, that we want to be—one that doesn't leave anyone behind as we move forward.

What we also can't afford is to continue on with a vocational education and training system that does not put public TAFE at its heart. Public TAFE has to be rebuilt, strengthened and supported. It should be at the core of a vocational education and training system. In my electorate of Dunkley, the Chisholm Institute is a foundation of our community. It means so much more than the absolutely magnificent new building that the Andrews Labor state government has funded. It means opportunity for people, young and old. And 'apprentices, trades and skills' doesn't just mean tradies who are building buildings. Of course we need more tradies, but vocational education and training and public TAFEs are about so much more than that. At the Chisholm Institute in Frankston, my community goes to learn skills in art and design; automotive; building trades; business; community services; computer technology; early childhood and education support; employment preparation and foundation; engineering; hair, beauty and make-up; health; higher education; horticulture and conservation; and hospitality and events. There's a range of short courses in arts, computer technology and mechanics, and there's training and assessment skills, VET, VCE, VCAL and workplace safety.

Public TAFE, when you look at that list of courses that are offered, is about the fabric of my community and people having the opportunity to learn and to go to work. Because of the state Labor government, 37 of those courses at the Chisholm Institute in Frankston are free. That's what it means to not leave anyone behind and to future-plan. That's what it means to look at the skills and the workforce that are needed—early childhood education and caring is a very good example of that—and to say, 'We want all of our citizens to have access to that high-quality education and training in the areas that are needed, and it doesn't matter whether you can afford to pay, because it's a public good and a public right.'

We cannot continue with policies that leave people burdened with debt because they are trying to build a better future for themselves by getting vocational education and training, and we on this side of the House know that. Labor knows that. We have a track record. When we were last in government, Labor established Skills Australia in 2008, and it became the Australian Workforce Productivity Agency in 2011. That agency did what there is now some tokenistic talk from the government about. The agency analysed and reported on Australia's current, emerging and future workforce development needs. What happened when the Liberals and Nationals came into government in 2014? It was closed down. So is it any wonder that all of us around the country, in our communities, talk to businesses, both small manufacturing businesses and larger businesses, who say they can't find the skilled workforce that they need? Is it any surprise?

We won't oppose this bill, because it's better than nothing. But, as the shadow minister has said, taking the same people that are currently doing the work and simply giving them a new name within the department is not a real partnership. It's not a partnership between state and federal governments and unions, industry groups and educators to come up with a system that actually works for our people. It is, unfortunately, something that resembles the big announcement that the Prime Minister made about 'JobMaker', which turns out to be nothing more than words—no plan, no funding, no time line, no deliverables. You can't just talk the talk when it comes to vocational education and training; it means too much. It means too much to people who are in crisis now and it means too much for the future of Australia.

There's a lot of talk about how we're going to get through this recession. What we also need to be talking about is how we're going to build a better future as we get through this recession. Australia can't be resilient as a nation, we can't be resilient as a community, if we are not supporting our people to be able to contribute both to their own lives and to the economy, and we can't enable our people to do that unless we properly fund and support public education—public education in our schools, in our universities and, in the vocational education and training sector, in our TAFEs. We have to continue to push and push this government to stand up and do more than just talk about education and training, and actually invest in it—to acknowledge that their cuts of $3 billion and the underspend of $1 billion have had dire consequences for this vocational education and training system. We have to do more.

Labor know this. Our leader, Anthony Albanese, in his 'Jobs and the future of work' speech last year, talked about establishing Jobs and Skills Australia. I know there was scoffing on the government side: 'That's what we're going to do anyway.' No. It's not just words. It's not just putting a group of people in a department and giving it a name. Our proposal was for an independent statutory authority to provide genuine partnership with business leaders, large and small; state and territory governments; unions; education providers; and people who understand particular regions and cohorts—to have a real Jobs and Skills Australia, a collaborative and enduring structure. As we think about the way we work and our interaction with the world around us, as we go through an analysis of what we've experienced in the last few months and where we want to go in the future, that announcement Mr Albanese made in October last year has more and more resonance. It is genuinely about working together for a deliverable, not just talking about it.

More and more of our community now deeply understand that insecure work means, yes, you might have a job, but, when times get tough, if you're the last person in, the last person to be employed, the apprentice, the casual that's been there for less than 12 months, then you're the first person out. More and more Australians understand that insecure work means you might be doing quite well as an independent contractor at the moment, but, when the economic conditions change, your work dries up. More and more people understand that insecure work means needing to have a government that will back you in. That's where a government steps in and says, 'This is how we're going to deal with that insecurity going forward. It's a structural problem; it's a systemic problem. It's not something we will help you out with just for a month or two until we think we've done enough and then take it away and expect you to snap back.' Australians are awakening to what it means to be underemployed and insecure, and they're not going to accept being told, 'Just go back to the way it was,' because they now know what can happen with the click of a finger and the blink of an eye and how badly that can affect them.

As part of this bill today and this commission that the government is establishing there's talk about relying on evidence and data, and that is very welcome. We have to rely on evidence and data in education and training, and elsewhere. On display during this COVID pandemic has been a willingness to rely on scientists and medical evidence and to use data, research and experts to guide policymaking and political decision-making. That has been not only welcome but also successful. We've seen it at the state level and the federal level—a willingness to say, 'These people know what they're talking about; we need to accept what they say and base our response on it.' We can do it for COVID-19. We should be doing it for education and training. We should be doing it for climate change. We should be doing it for investing in preventative health. We should be doing it for justice reinvestment.

I call on members opposite, and the government, to take the attitude that has been shown towards experts, science and data during the COVID-19 crisis and apply it to policy more broadly, to take ideology and fighting culture wars out of how we look at the future and climate change and go back to the science and the experts and fund them to do the work that they need to do so that we can build a better future and go forward, not snap back. The worst thing that we could do coming out of this pandemic and trying to get through a recession is to say that we can snap back to where we were. That's not where we want to go. We want to go forward to a better future. For my community, a community that relies very heavily on our public TAFE system, vocational education and training has to be part of building that better future and taking everyone with us. If we don't put the public provision of vocational education and training and TAFE at the heart of our system, then we will be doing a disservice to the people we represent now and the generations to come.

Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over the last few months, I've seen firsthand how important the federal government's economic support package is to the electorate of Braddon in Tasmania. Although the impact of COVID-19 has been felt hard right across the region, the federal government's decisive action on both the health crisis and the economic crisis has limited the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The jobseeker and JobKeeper programs have formed the cornerstone of that assistance and have provided the support that many in our communities have so desperately needed.

I've received hundreds of contacts and calls from grateful recipients right across the length and breadth of the electorate testifying to these packages and what they mean. Print Domain, a local business in Burnie, expressed a typical sentiment. The owner of the business, Michael Gates, said to me that JobKeeper had been exactly the right program for the crisis. He went on to say: 'The beauty of the program is that I can retain staff with highly specialised skill sets. It allows me to scale up to full operational tempo without having to worry about retraining somebody new. The program has been a real blessing for me, and I know that others feel the same way.'

JobKeeper and jobseeker play a vital role. As we transition into the recovery phase of the coronavirus, JobMaker will continue to assist us navigate through the economic recovery. JobMaker will be pivotal in lifting productivity and laying the foundations for a prosperous future right across the region. It's also no secret that I'm passionate about education—

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate resumes.