Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time, to which the honourable member for Cooper 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 will state the question in the form that the words proposed to be omitted to stand part of the question.

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Governance and Other Matters) Bill 2020. Labor will support this bill because we believe that students studying in Australian TAFEs deserve to study high-quality courses. The pandemic and associated economic downturn have made it clearer than ever just how important education is not only for the individual but also for the nation. The VET system is fundamental to the Australian economy, but it has been neglected under this government. The changes proposed by this bill, while possibly helpful, are relatively minor and certainly don't deliver the significant level of reform that the TAFE system needs.

The bill amends the governance structures of the Australian Skills Quality Authority, the national VET regulator, and enhances information-sharing arrangements between ASQA and the National Centre for Vocational Education Research. Key amendments will revive ASQA's governance structure, replacing the existing chief commissioner, chief executive officer and two commissioners with a single independent statutory office holder, a CEO, and establish a National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Advisory Council. The advisory council is intended to provide ASQA with expert advice regarding the functions of the regulator.

The lack of TAFE and union representation on the advisory council is a serious oversight by this government and, as usual, is a sign of ideology, rather than prioritising the provision of the best advice to ASQA. Union membership is strong within the industries typically trained by TAFEs. They clearly understand the work that construction workers, care workers and other heavily unionised industries do, and, as such, the training they need. With TAFE staff also strongly unionised and TAFE teachers clearly expert in the provision of VET courses, why on earth wouldn't they be at the top of the list for a place on the TAFE advisory council? When it comes to the VET sector, their views should be heard and considered. That's why we'll seek to move amendments in the Senate to ensure the public provider has seats at the table.

Labor supports a fair and considered approach to ASQA reforms. We will support changes that improve ASQA's capacity to ensure responsiveness to students, communities and employers, but we will reject changes that attempt to weaken ASQA's regulatory framework. We need to ensure that reforms to ASQA audit processes do not allow any reduction in quality. In the past, we've seen this government be slow to act on quality issues and this has done serious damage to the sector. Quality is vital in the VET sector. Lives and safety depend on it. A poorly trained builder or carer can do serious damage.

TAFE creates skilled workers who build our country and keep it operational, but it hasn't been delivering what we need it to for a long time. Australia has a crisis in skills and vocational training after seven years of a conservative government. Australia has experienced a 73 per cent drop in the number of apprenticeships advertised. The system has been cut to the bone; $3 billion has been removed from TAFE and training sectors. We need this funding restored and we need serious investment in vocational education and training, a sector that will be vital to the economic recovery our nation is about to embark on.

We had skills shortages before COVID-19. As we recover, we will need a strong and well-funded vocational education and training system to train and upskill our workforce so they can participate in the new economy. If people are unemployed because of this crisis—and we know one million Australians who weren't unemployed at the start of 2020 will be by the end of the year—then we need to enable them to easily access new training opportunities and skill them for work.

But not only have the government cut VET to the bone, they have has also failed to spend money they have budgeted for skills. The federal education department's own data shows the Liberals have failed to spend $919 million of their own TAFE and training budget over the past five years. With acknowledged skills shortages in this country, how is an underspend possible? With high youth unemployment across various parts of Australia prior to COVID-19, how is there an underspend? Where is the strategy from this government to skill Australians and get them into work? And why are TAFE facilities crumbling across Australia with almost $1 billion unspent? Why aren't we offering quality courses, taught to anyone who needs training, in high-quality facilities across Australia? It's a serious lack of vision on the part of this government.

Now the Prime Minister has announced his intention to maybe improve the way the Morrison government funds TAFEs, but only if the states agree to do the heavy lifting, and then, maybe, if they come to the table, the Prime Minister will restore some of the billions he has ripped out of the TAFE system. There is no commitment to improve skills training during the first recession in almost 30 years. There is no commitment to stem the haemorrhaging of apprenticeships that has occurred under this government. It is all talk, no action.

This lack of action is alarming considering that unemployment has doubled since COVID-19 began. Under the Liberals there are 150,000 fewer apprentices and trainees, and a shortage of workers in critical services, including plumbing, carpentry, hairdressing and motor mechanics. The number of Australians doing an apprenticeship or traineeship is lower today than it was a decade ago. The independent National Centre for Vocational Education Research recently found that, over the past year, 20 per cent fewer people were signing up to trade apprenticeships and traineeships. This was even more extreme in a number of essential trades. The number of Australians studying an apprenticeship or traineeship in construction, including carpentry, bricklaying and plumbing, dropped by an alarming 40 per cent. There are more people dropping out of vocational education training courses than finishing them. These numbers must get better—not only for the economy but also for the young people who a decade ago would have been undertaking this training but are not today.

As Anthony Albanese outlined in his vision statement on emerging from the shadow of COVID-19, we need to support people to train too. For many young people, this will mean a liveable youth allowance payment. I have been contacted over the last few months by many students who have been unable to access anything from this government's COVID-19 package and who are desperate for assistance. What makes a government exclude young people during this crisis? I've heard from students who obviously had not been working in their casual jobs for a year, many because they had moved to Canberra in January to start studying, who were, of course, unable to access the JobKeeper payment. Then, because they're students, which means they're not unemployed, they have been unable to access the jobseeker payment. And, because this government has refused to relax the parental income test on youth allowance, they have not been able to access youth allowance, even in this time of crisis. A further issue on that point is that the parental income test is based on the parents' income from the previous financial year. So, if their parents have lost their jobs due to COVID-19, have had their income massively reduced or have lost their business, that is not accounted for in that income test, and the government has refused to heed Labor's calls to do something about this and ensure that some support can be provided to these young people.

It is this mindset that has led to this government failing to adequately support the training of our young people. They have failed to acknowledge that not everyone has family who can support them while they train or study and that, with the increased cost of living, it is increasingly unrealistic for middle-income families to support their adult children. There is a further assumption that it's easy for parents to support adult children and that students who are trying to study can do it because their parents can help them. That is exactly the sort of thing we as a nation want to address. We want everyone to have the chance to study at TAFE or university. Clearly, they can't with costs of living as they are and no support from this government.

It's time that we saw youth allowance as an investment in young Australians and in the future of our nation. For over a month now, Labor has been calling on the government to increase access to youth allowance, and the minister has refused to act. The Labor Party called on the government to waive the parental income test on a case-by-case basis, but they have refused to act. We must invest in our young people and set them up for success. The Morrison government has failed to do this during the pandemic, and this bill demonstrates the lack of ambition they have for our TAFEs, our young people and, in turn, the future of this nation.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the past decade, TAFE and similar training organisations have been the poor cousins when it comes to investing in post-secondary education in Australia. As the education spokesperson for Centre Alliance, this leaves me and, I'm sure, many of those who are involved in the sector deeply concerned, particularly as our young people navigate a post-COVID-19 world.

Just yesterday, I listened to the education minister talking about the huge surge in interest in university applications and about how many applicants the minister believes won't receive a place, which will leave many young people languishing next year with few job prospects. With no opportunity for a gap year and with poor job prospects, it seems those with a marginal interest in attending university have decided that study might be better than unemployment. There has been a considerable amount of marketing of university as a job training pathway, and higher education continues to rise in importance. However, direct employment outcomes do not always follow a degree. During my time working in the youth sector and in other sectors, I have met many young people with degrees who couldn't find a job in their chosen field. What we need to do, though, is to ensure that young people realise that there are many pathways to success and that the support is there to access those pathways. One pathway is certainly TAFE.

Latest figures show that Australia had 1.5 million university students enrolled in 2019. There were 4.1 million students in vocational education and training, including around 260,000 apprentices and trainees, 230,000 school based students and more than a million students in government funded courses provided through institutes such as TAFE. In South Australia alone, there were 70,000 TAFE enrolments last year, with students taking part in over 630 courses across 290 sites.

I would like to talk briefly about the TAFE sites in my electorate of Mayo in Mount Barker, in Victor Harbor and on Kangaroo Island. Around 2½ thousand people across my electorate are involved in TAFE training in some form. All three campuses work exceptionally hard, with very limited resources, facilities and equipment—and I can't underline enough how limited their resources really are. Even barista equipment is in dire need of upgrade. Given these limited resources, I am amazed at how much TAFE is able to do with so little, but significant additional investment is clearly very much needed. Training on Kangaroo Island is not delivered through a dedicated campus. Rather, courses are delivered directly to industry, agriculture and community sites, including at one of the local pubs, and students are supported with online training materials.

Just last week I received some very welcome news from the TAFE manager in my region about a certificate III in individual support—that's in ageing and disability—that has just commenced on Kangaroo Island. It took a considerable amount of time and effort for that certificate to be available. I understand that 14 students are signed up to gain that qualification, and I'm advised that all of them, provided that they pass, will be able to walk straight into a job on the island, given the significant need for the invaluable skills they are learning. I would like to commend all of those students for taking that step and seeking to gain that certificate. There is an urgent need for carers on the island, and this course will help meet that demand.

Indeed, there is an urgent need for carers throughout Mayo, the electorate with the oldest median age in South Australia. So it would seem quite logical that we would have that great need. We need to have some really significant investment in vocational training in my electorate so that locals are able to get that certificate III in caring, in ageing, and then provide support to those who are in need in our community. It's been estimated that the aged-care workforce will need to grow from 366,000 to nearly one million by 2050 to meet the needs of the increasing numbers of older Australians accessing aged care. But I don't think we are planning for this. Mount Barker and the surrounding regions contain more than 30 residential aged-care and disability facilities. Victor Harbor and its surrounding region contain another 15 residential aged-care and disability facilities. Yet getting into a course locally is so difficult.

The move towards individualised and specialised service provision through the individual care plans in the National Disability Insurance Scheme has created an unparalleled shortage of new workers, and we need to ensure that our vocational education providers, such as TAFE, have the resources to meet the demand. Another pressing need in my local area is investment in building and construction and in hospitality. An extensive refurbishment of the existing skills labs at the Victor Harbor and Mount Barker campuses would significantly expand TAFE's capacity to deliver training in these key areas.

There are just under 11,000 businesses operating in Mayo; 99.6 per cent of them are categorised as small businesses, and nearly one in five of them are in the construction sector. TAFE SA Mount Barker has just begun a multi-trades program for high school students who are interested in trade pathways, focusing on building and construction. Twelve students are currently participating in the program, and already one student has been signed up for an apprenticeship. Noah started work as a first-year apprentice bricklayer last week and he will continue trade training through TAFE. Good luck, Noah. We need you. We need really good bricklayers, tilers and builders. I was pleased to learn that TAFE SA is rolling out much-needed training in forklift and telehandler tickets and licensing on Kangaroo Island across June and July. I'm advised that these short two-week courses are fully subscribed and are being run with the support of local businesses and organisations, including Kangaroo Island Council, Kangaroo Island Business and Brand Alliance, Ag KI, Mitre 10, Capula, Junction Australia and the Ozone Hotel.

Besides construction, more than 10 per cent of small businesses in Mayo are involved in retail, food and accommodation. The Adelaide Hills, Fleurieu and Kangaroo Island are well-known destinations for food, wine, hospitality and tourism. All of them are in my electorate. And my electorate is home to over a hundred recognised wineries and cellar doors, complemented by increasing numbers of restaurants, cafes, microbreweries, hotels and accommodation facilities. Demand for skills and labour across the tourism and hospitality sector continues to grow in our region. The changing nature of the industry, moving away from seasonal peaks to year-round activity, provides increasing genuine career pathways and ongoing employment opportunities.

Our construction and tourism sectors have been hit hard by COVID restrictions, world market conditions and, of course, the bushfires, but we will bounce back. Figures from Global Apprenticeship Network Australia show the number of advertised apprenticeship positions fell by 73 per cent between January and April this year, largely due to the downturn in the economy thanks to COVID. There were 468 jobs advertised in April 2020 compared to 1,212 in April last year, but there were strong signs of business confidence returning, with the number of apprenticeship vacancies increasing by 150 per cent in May, to 678 positions. The biggest proportional increase was in hospitality, travel and tourism.

Having toured the TAFE campuses in my electorate, I know much of the work that needs to be done at the Mount Barker site involves bringing the construction, automotive, community services, hospitality, business and IT facilities up to modern standards. The Victor Harbor campus is also desperately in need of upgrades to facilities for forklift licencing and training in tourism, hospitality and community services. Both campuses are located in rapidly growing areas. Mount Barker will be the second largest city in SA in the next 30 years with a population of more than 56,000 by 2036. The size of both campuses and the age of their facilities will significantly restrict the quantity and quality of courses that they can offer our young people if we don't act now. This is why, before the federal election last year, I made a commitment to the people of Mayo that I would advocate strongly for investment in our TAFE campuses. Young kids in regional areas, such as my electorate, want to study regionally, and one of the places they can do that is TAFE. But our TAFEs have not had the investment that they need.

University isn't the only pathway to success, as I mentioned before. We need young people to study in areas that they love right across the spectrum, from aged care, through to mechanics and carpenters and in the construction industry. We want young people to stay in our regions, and they want to stay in our regions. We want young people to stay in South Australia, and we need to make sure that the avenues for training are there for them. So I call on the major parties to make it a priority to invest in quality training and education and, particularly, to invest in TAFE and vocational education in the regions, as well as to provide greater opportunity for young people from the regions to access university.

Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very happy to be here to talk about the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Governance and Other Matters) Bill 2020. As I'm sure many of the previous Labor speakers would have mentioned, we support a fair and considered approach to the ASQA reforms, and we'll support changes that improve the capacity to ensure responsiveness to students, communities and employers, but we'll reject changes that attempt to weaken ASQA's regulatory framework.

If I can be frank, and I hope I can, more broadly, this legislation is just another tweak from a tired third-term conservative government who simply refuse to deliver a genuine reform package that overhauls this vital sector to our nation—if I'm honest. The Liberals have slashed funding to TAFE and training, let apprentice numbers fall and presided over a national shortage of tradies, apprentices and trainees. I see that in my electorate of Solomon in the northern capital of Australia, but I know it's happening around the country. For more than seven years this tired and clueless Liberal government has left Australia facing a crisis in skills and vocational training. If they don't do something seriously to fix this skills crisis that they have themselves created, we could be looking at the extinction of the Australian tradies.

Under those opposite there are 150,000 fewer apprentices and trainees and a shortage of workers in critical services, including plumbing, carpentry, hairdressing and motor mechanics. Experts are now warning that we are on track to lose another 100,000 this year if the government fails to act. That's 2,000 trainees and apprentices a week. I also need to remind the House that those opposite have cut TAFE and training by over $3 billion. The number of Australians doing an apprenticeship or traineeship is lower today than it was a decade ago. Just two weeks ago in my electorate I was talking to young refrigeration mechanic Cameron—good lad. He was in his last year and he was saying that not many of his mates were able to get into the training that they wanted and in fact that industry needed, and he couldn't really understand what had happened. He'd seen his older brothers and older mates go through and get a trade, but what he was seeing was far different to that.

There are also more people dropping out of apprenticeships and traineeships than finishing them, and that's a problem for us and a problem for our nation. There's a nearly 10 per cent increase in the number of occupations facing skills shortages. While the Australian Industry Group says 75 per cent of businesses surveyed are struggling to find the qualified workers they need, there are about 1.9 million Australians who are unemployed or underemployed. So you can see that there's this disconnect. We are simultaneously experiencing a crisis of youth unemployment and also a crisis of skills shortages. One of these is bad enough, but to be faced by both at the same time is pretty hard to imagine. But here we are, confronted with both. While businesses are struggling to fill the skilled positions they have on offer, we have young Australians desperate for work who can't fill those positions because they haven't been given the chance to gain the skills that those roles, those jobs, require.

I want to know why the Prime Minister isn't training these young Australians for jobs in industries where there's a shortage of workers. The answer, of course, is what I mentioned just a little while ago. There's been $3 billion cut out of the sector. They've cut funding to TAFE and training. Even though this is the case—and it's plainly obvious that it is—the government, those opposite, refuse to properly fund the sector. They refuse to give it the proper reform that it so desperately needs.

Now, young people have been clear about what they need. They need a skills training sector that is properly funded and properly resourced and has educators who are properly trained and able to skill these kids up as a pathway to meaningful employment so they can grow our nation. This government hasn't delivered on a single element of those requests from our young Australians, from our future. Fiddling at the edges of the current system will not address the profound problems that undermine vocational education and training and, consequentially, the productive performance and international competitiveness of our economy.

The government doesn't seem to understand the critical role of TAFE as the public provider, the value in skills and apprenticeships or the value of the hardworking and passionate public TAFE teachers. If we continue down this path, we will severely jeopardise our future economic growth, undermine the opportunity of individual Australians to meet their full potential and, very importantly, compromise our ability as a nation to compete with the rest of the world using the skills, knowledge, discovery and inventiveness of our people. We know that nine out of 10 jobs created in the future will need post-secondary school education, either TAFE or uni, so we need to increase participation in both our universities and our vocational educational sector to make sure our young people are prepared for the world of work, which is changing so very quickly. If we do not value the role of an appropriately funded VET sector for the training, skills and apprenticeships they provide to so many Australians, nor its vital role in driving the economy and enhancing industry, we fail our nation.

This third-term government has had seven years to fix this sector. Rather, they started the cuts and, in the intervening years, they have failed to properly fund and resource the sector. They need to deliver a genuine reform package that overhauls this higher ed sector and properly funds both the VET providers and the universities to deliver the services that the students need.

When it comes to the Northern Territory, it is undeniable that the government's inattention and callous disregard for apprentices and trainees has been a kick in the guts for Territorians. The tradie crisis created by the federal Liberal government—that is, those opposite—is hurting the Territory's economy and denying Territorians jobs. As a result, we now have shortages of bricklayers, plumbers, hairdressers, bakers, electricians, mechanics, panel beaters and other critical trades.

We have so many terrific businesses in Darwin, Palmerston, the rural area and other parts of the Northern Territory, and they want to grow. They want to hire more staff. They want to employ more locals. They want to employ those who have put down roots in the Territory. That's what they would rather do. Unfortunately, they're forced to either go without those additional workers or look for oversees workers, because they're let down by the Prime Minister's failure to back apprentices and trainees.

We have lost over 600 apprentices in the Territory since those opposite came to power. This is the government that promised to grow the North and to develop the North. What a load of rubbish that turned out to be. It has been seven years and all we've seen are cuts to this sector, a lack of resourcing and 600 fewer apprentices. We're trying to grow the North and at the same time we're being hamstrung by those opposite who fail to recognise the essential nature of the skills VET training sector.

This is a government that has bungled so much in that seven years. The fact that they've stuffed up TAFE and training isn't a shock really, but once again it is something that will devastate thousands around the country. What gets me the most is that it's affecting our future. It's affecting the young Territorians, the young Australians. It's affecting those who want to start a career, be able to support themselves and be able to support their families in due course, but their opportunities are far fewer after seven years of those opposite.

The Prime Minister's latest marketing ploy around tradies hasn't really helped anyone either. HomeBuilder has done nothing for tradies. It's a rubbish policy designed for grabs on the nightly news and to shield an incompetent government that has no plan to help tradies at all. The quote from the member for Blaxland, 'It's more Scotty's scam than Scotty Cam,' is a cracker. I think it very nicely sums up this absolute facade.

In the time I have left, I'd like to acknowledge the work done by the Northern Territory government to help support our tradies during the pandemic. The Northern Territory government—I'm proud to say it is a Labor government—has chosen substance over spin and has rightly focused on developing a plan to keep people employed. They’ve backed our tradies.

We need this federal government, those opposite, to start focusing on meaningful reform in this sector over marketing and spin. It's all about the announcement but there's never any follow-through. I remind honourable members that it has been seven years and all we have seen from the government is mismanagement, creating crisis after crisis in the VET sector. Young Territorians and young Australians deserve a lot better and I call on those opposite to pull their fingers out and provide the system that we need to grow our nation.

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

This is one of the issues that's going to be key in our ability to help people recover from the economic crisis and from the financial crisis they have personally faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. When I think about 31,000 apprenticeships and traineeships disappearing from New South Wales, it's a horrific thought, particularly for a community like mine in the Hawkesbury where so many people have built their business and their life on their apprenticeship. They started out wanting to be a plumber or wanting to work in construction and, through that, working in a family business or for a friend of a family member or finding their way into an apprenticeship in some of our fantastic small business areas, they then went: 'You know what? I don't just want to work for someone else. I want to work for myself.' I think we forget about the pathway that is laid by having a strong VET system. These bills which start to improve the system, although not to the extent that we would like, will really make a difference to kids' lives. We, of course, would like to see a much bigger difference being made, but we obviously won't oppose this bill.

One of the issues that has been raised with me over the years has been the quality of ASQA's governance. People have found it very difficult to find their way through the bureaucracy and the procedure involved. So I think the key amendments here—revising ASQA's governance structure and replacing the existing chief executive officer and two commissioners with a single independent statutory office holder, or a CEO—are really important. I hope that makes a difference. I hope the establishment of the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Advisory Council, which is intended to provide ASQA with access to expert advice regarding the functions of the regulator, also makes a difference.

In relation to the value of TAFE, I'm very lucky to have within my electorate of Macquarie a wonderful woman who heads up the TAFE Teachers' Association, Annette Bennett. She works tirelessly to make sure that not only are the interests of students fulfilled but also the TAFE teachers are treated the way they deserve to be. They are people who are absolutely expert in what they do. Not only have they achieved a professional standing that is recognised by their peers, but they have also chosen to give up their professional ability to earn money in that capacity to say: 'Look, I want to share what I know. I want to share my expertise and my skills with people.' It is people who are really driven to share their expertise who help us transfer the skills to the next generation. so I think we should all be commending TAFE teachers for the work that they do.

We recognise that we need a fair and considered approach to these ASQA reforms and we will support the changes that improve the organisation's capacity to ensure it is responsive to students, communities and employers, but we do not support the changes that attempt to weaken the regulatory framework.

I just want to talk more about the broader need for reform in TAFE. This really is just another little adjustment to a system that has been undermined for the nearly seven years of this government. There haven't been things that have built up TAFE; there have only been things that tear it down. Every member in this place can see it with their own eyes in their own electorates, where the range of courses that used to be offered in a TAFE are no longer offered. You can't get the specialty manufacturing skills needed for the manufacturing sector in the electorate of Macquarie any more, nor can you get it in large areas of Western Sydney. You need to travel a really long distance to be able to do certain courses.

I'm all for bringing together specialities, but you also have to make TAFE accessible. You can't make it hard for young people who have simply stayed in their suburb and gone to their local primary school and then their local high school, being all of a sudden asked, even before some have their licences, to travel large distances. Keep in mind that Hawkesbury, in particular, doesn't have good public transport connections with so many other TAFEs. For instance, to get to the Kingswood TAFE you need to catch a train to Blacktown—that's a hike in itself—change trains and head back in the other direction to get to Penrith. In a car it's an easy half-hour drive but by train can take over an hour and a half. These are the sorts of things that really go to the heart of TAFE—making training accessible.

I think the coronavirus outbreak has really brought home to people the need for accessible education. There are many people who are now on jobseeker or JobKeeper and are likely to lose their JobKeeper payment and their job come September. They'll be asking themselves: How do I retrain? What system do I want to go to? How do I know I'm going to get quality training for the money that I spend? It's not just a token amount any more. We're now talking about serious expenditure. It's a heavy debt that people carry for the privilege of learning.

More than ever, we need to think about how we make TAFE accessible and how to build up its capacity for the many new people who, until now, might not have considered the need to reskill. With coronavirus and the crisis it has brought to the economy, they will recognise the need to shift their skill base. The most recent figures show a 73 per cent drop in the number of apprenticeships advertised. Not only am I concerned, come the end of this year, about the people whose jobs will disappear in September but I'm concerned about the people in years 11 and 12 now. I've been speaking to a lot of year 12 students. Many of them do want to get an apprenticeship. They don't see university as the most appropriate path for them, but they want an apprenticeship. I had contact from a constituent recently whose son lost his apprenticeship during this coronavirus pandemic. He's desperate to get back into it, to find a new employer and to pick up that apprenticeship to further his career.

Right now we should be talking about capacity building in TAFE. While in this amendment there is a slight adjustment in hopefully the ability of the TAFE to deliver a quality product, it's not what we need. We need way more than what is being offered in this and other pieces of legislation that have come to this chamber in the last week or so.

I don't think you can talk about TAFE without talking about the skills shortages. It strikes me that there'll be additional skills shortages going forward. In 2013, I lost my house in a bushfire and for the next few years there was a shocking shortage of brickies and roofers. I know the Blue Mountains had to have roofers brought down from northern New South Wales to meet the demand, and that was a fire that took out 200 homes. Now we've had fires across the state taking out thousands of homes, so we are really going to struggle to find the tradespeople to be able to do those rebuilds in a timely fashion. It isn't good enough to just say, 'What we've got will do,' and nor is it good enough to rely on bringing in temporary workers from overseas. The only reason you would do that is if you were using them to train up your people and create more traineeships. But, as we've seen under this government, we're not seeing more trainees and apprenticeships created; we're seeing fewer.

There are fewer apprenticeships and trainees now than there were when Labor was last in government, and that is a shocking statistic for people to consider. But it's not surprising when you know that this is a government that spent seven years cutting funding while also underspending on what had been promised to the sector. Rebuilding our skills and our training sector is crucial, and I look forward in coming months to seeing some legislation before the place which actually talks about rebuilding the sector.

We need to properly fund our TAFE and apprenticeship program. We need to see something that makes up for the $3 billion of cuts to TAFE and training in recent years, and the government needs to restore all the funding that it's cut by investing in training so that the next generation of tradespeople actually find their way into TAFE and have a supportive mentor—someone who is willing to take them through the hard yards. It isn't easy to say, 'I'm going to take on an apprentice.'

I've spoken to a lot of builders in the last few months for a whole range of reasons, from bushfire to HomeBuilder. They say that it's harder than ever. The support for them as employers is less than they've seen for themselves in previous years, and many have chosen not to keep on taking apprentices. We need to reverse that. Those employers have such depth of knowledge to share, but we all know what it's like having work experience people in our offices. It takes time to make it a really worthwhile process for them. Now do that tenfold with apprentices, and it does take a real commitment from an employer. So I salute the employers who do have apprentices and who are willing to take them on and invest in them, whether it is in the construction industry or whether it's in the hair and beauty sector, where there is also big demand.

I've talked to some fantastic operators of hair and beauty salons. Linda Fenech, who is considered to be a real leader in her industry, is based in Richmond. Linda has a team of girls. She admits she's tough, but they absolutely recognise that. She is not only tough but fair. She sets for them a really high standard of work. That's the sort of person we need and the sorts of ideals we need, but those employers need to be supported to be able to take themselves away from their business so that they can mentor, teach and guide their younger apprentices.

I suspect that, in the wake of COVID and the job losses that we've already seen and the ones that we all expect to see, it won't just be young people who will want to be apprentices. We will need to have people willing to mentor and train up older workers who can see that there's an opportunity and that we should be creating that opportunity. We should be making it easy for those people to see an alternative pathway in a whole lot of ways, such as by making it accessible to find out what the pathways are online.

The other thing I absolutely think we need to be looking at is how we tie together university and TAFE. The two of them work so effectively together for so many of the jobs of now and the jobs of the future. I'm very lucky to have a TAFE and Western Sydney University campus side by side at Richmond, and they are looking at all sorts of agricultural initiatives that will involve students from the TAFE as well as the university researchers.

One of them is to do with periurban cropping. How can we use the giant greenhouse at Western Sydney in the Hawkesbury campus to expand what is available for local use but also for export? They have a vision of having a logistics hub placed right next to that. They have a proposal to the government for that. I urge the government to consider supporting the Western Sydney proposal for a logistics hub that not only would help periurban producers in my electorate—especially in the Hawkesbury and parts of the Blue Mountains—but would help producers all through Western Sydney. It would also create opportunities for export, because if we can do work on how to grow things so that they travel easily and if we look at, logistically, how we package them, we give ourselves an edge for exports to Asia. They are the sorts of things that generate more jobs and generate apprenticeships in a whole range of areas.

Of course, the other thing TAFE campuses need is some investment. Absolutely, go for the great big new things, but we could also do with improvements. The greenhouses at Richmond TAFE desperately need updating. They're 30 or 40 years old. They're still working, because the TAFE teachers and the people who work at TAFE just keep on getting the best they can out of them, but one of my election commitments was to upgrade them. That's the sort of thing this government needs to be doing.

Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to rise on this bill this evening and speak on behalf of the apprentices in my electorate on the north side of Brisbane. Many of them have been in touch over the previous months since I was elected to talk about the crisis in TAFE and the need for more investment in the sector.

Labor will support the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Governance and Other Matters) Bill 2020 this evening, because we believe that students studying in Australian TAFEs deserve to study high-quality courses. That's what they deserve. The pandemic and the associated economic downturn have made it clearer than ever just how important education is. You never know when you're going to need to pivot, whether as an individual or as a nation.

The VET system is fundamental to the Australian economy, but it has been neglected under this government. The changes proposed by this bill, while possibly helpful, are relatively minor and they certainly don't deliver on the significant level of reform that our TAFE system needs. I feel that this is possibly the third time I've risen in this House to make this point, and it represents another missed opportunity this evening for us to do more for our VET sector and our TAFE students.

The bill amends the governance structures of the Australian Skills Quality Authority and enhances information sharing arrangements between ASQA and the National Centre for Vocational Education Research. The key amendments will revise ASQA's governance structure and replace the existing chief commissioner and CEO and two commissioners with a single independent statutory office holder. It will also establish the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Advisory Council. That's intended to provide ASQA with access to expert advice regarding the functions of the regulator.

The lack of TAFE and union representation on the advisory council is a serious oversight by this government, and, to be honest, it smacks of ideology rather than the provision of best advice to ASQA. Union membership is very strong within these industries. They are typically trained by TAFE themselves. They understand the work that the construction workers, the care workers and the workers in other heavily unionised industries do—the people on the frontline. As such, they understand the training that they need. With TAFE staff who are also strongly unionised and TAFE teachers who are clearly expert in the provision of VET courses, why on earth wouldn't they be on the top of the list for these seats on the council? Their views should be heard and considered when it comes to the VET sector. That's what we believe on this side of the House, and that's why we'll seek to move some amendments to that effect, to ensure that the public provider has seats at the table. We will do that in the other place.

We support a fair, considered approach to the ASQA reforms. We will support changes that improve ASQA's capacity to ensure responsiveness to students, communities and employers, but we'll reject changes that attempt to weaken the regulatory framework. We need to ensure that reforms to ASQA audit processes don't allow any reduction in quality. In the past, we have seen this government be slow to act on quality issues. That has done serious damage to the sector. That's a real problem, because quality is vital in this sector. Lives and safety depend on it. A poorly trained builder or a poorly trained carer can do serious damage.

TAFE creates our skilled workers who build our country and keep it operational, but it hasn't been delivering what we need it to, what our students need it to and what our future students need it to for a very long time. Australia now has a crisis in skills and vocational training. After seven years of a Liberal government, Australia has experienced a 73 per cent drop in the number of apprenticeships advertised. The government has cut the system to the bone. It has removed $3 billion from the TAFE and training sector. We need this funding restored and we need a serious investment in VET, a sector that will be vital to the economic recovery our nation is about to embark upon.

We had skills shortages before COVID-19 and, as we recover, we will need a strong and well-funded VET system to train and upskill our workforce so that they can participate in the new economy. If people are unemployed because of this crisis, and we know that they will be, and we know that one million Australians who weren't employed at the start of 2020 will be by the end of the year, then we need to enable them to access new training opportunities and to skill them for new work. But not only has the government cut VET to the bone; it has also failed to spend the money that it budgeted for skills.

The federal education department's own data shows that the Liberals have failed to spend $919 million of their own TAFE and training budget over the last five years. With acknowledged skills shortages in this country, how is an underspend even possible? With high youth unemployment across various parts of Australia prior to COVID-19, how is there an underspend? I know in my home state of Queensland, the unemployment rate is something like 6.3 per cent for the Brisbane east area, higher than the national average. But the youth unemployment rate is at 11.2 per cent, double the national average. In parts of Queensland, particularly North Queensland—and I note the member for Leichhardt has just come in—youth unemployment has risen as high as 25.7 per cent for kids who are growing up in regional areas like Cairns or Mount Isa.

We have a crisis in youth unemployment and we have a crisis when it comes to skill shortages, but for some reason the government fails to put two and two together and continues to underspend. It boggles the mind. One of these is bad enough to be faced with if you are a kid growing up in regional Australia, but both of them at the same time, and now with this pandemic, is very, very tough. We should be doing more here in this place. That's what people elected us to do. Our apprentices and tradies, people who were told that if they had a go they would get a go, have been the worst affected by this. The school students and the young jobseekers in my electorate of Lilley have been clear with me about what they need. They need a skills training sector that is adequately funded, that is properly resourced and that has educators who are properly trained so that they can aspire to and secure the highly skilled, highly paid jobs in technical industries. The coalition government needs to come up with a better plan than this.

According to the Australian Industry Group, which is hardly a bastion of socialism, 75 per cent of businesses surveyed are struggling to find the qualified workers they need. At the same time, almost two million Australians were unemployed before COVID or were looking for more hours of work. So why isn't the Prime Minister training jobseekers for jobs in these industries where there is a shortage of workers? This seems like first-year economics 101 stuff: supply should meet demand. Where we have employers crying out for more qualified workers and jobseekers desperately looking for more work, only this government could fail to connect the two.

Late last year, I had the pleasure of visiting a TAFE north of Brisbane, Bracken Ridge TAFE, which is, I will admit, just outside my electorate in the member for Petrie's electorate. But many of the students there are from Lilley, so I go there as often as I can possibly get myself invited. I took the member for Sydney and the Queensland state minister for TAFE with me for a tour of the facilities. The campus has a shared delivery arrangement with TAFE Queensland SkillsTech and the Queensland Pathways State College. We heard about the fantastic work that the Queensland Labor state government is doing despite the federal funding cuts, including providing free apprenticeships for people under the age of 21. There are over 20 free apprenticeships for those under 21 available on the Brisbane North campus, including apprenticeships in electrotechnology, construction, plumbing and marine mechanical technology. Since July 2019, over 115 new apprentices commenced training on that Brisbane North campus. Put simply, when TAFEs are properly invested in, we get results, and I'm sure the member for Petrie would agree with me on what a great job the Queensland Labor state government is doing in that space.

When I was speaking to these apprentices on that visit at the end of last year, what really stood out for me was the relationship they had with their teachers and the outstanding work their teachers are doing in leading them through. I met Andrew Begbie, who was teaching carpentry and cabinet making; John O'Shea, outdoor powering equipment; and Dave Compton, automotive industry. And I met all of their students, who were diligent and hardworking in the hopes that they would be able to secure a job as a result of their efforts.

We need to make sure that these fantastic teachers have the support that they need. They are passing on their knowledge and their skills to young people who want to learn and to work, and they deserve better than $1 billion in underspending. I also want to take this opportunity to commend Zupps Aspley, who are providing certificate III apprenticeships in light vehicle mechanical technology to young locals on the north side. They are stepping up and doing what this government should be doing.

The Prime Minister isn't training young people for jobs in industries that are facing skill shortages. Instead, he's starving TAFEs and training funding and wondering why the rates of apprenticeships and traineeships are dropping. Australia's economic growth has been the slowest since the global financial crisis, and that was before we faced the pandemic this year. Wages were stagnant. Household debt had skyrocketed, and business investment was at its lowest level since the 1990s recession. A decline in vocational education and training only worsens those outcomes for everybody, and it worsens them for generations to come. Fiddling at the edges of the TAFE system, as we are seeing here again now, will not address the problems that this government has created in vocational education and training. If we continue down this path of underfunding, we will sabotage future economic growth, undermine the opportunities for young Australians looking to upskill to meet their full potential and compromise our national productivity.

We know that nine out of 10 jobs created in the future will need post-secondary-school education, including TAFE. We need to act now to increase the participation in our vocational education sector to make sure that our young people have the skills necessary to meet this demand. Look at what adequate funding has done on the Brisbane North TAFE campus. I know how important vocational education and training is to our local economy and for our local jobs. The Liberal government either doesn't care or doesn't have the capacity to do that hard work that needs to be done to build a path to skilled jobs. Tonight is another failed opportunity to do more in this space. The Prime Minister claims that he wants to lift the status of vocational Australia, yet his actions, like the failure to move more significant reform than that provided to the House this evening, prove that he doesn't. Australians are sick of the marketing, the hollow men, the publicity stunts and the empty gestures. The vocational education and training system managed by this government is failing students, it is failing workers, it is failing local business, it is failing local economies like the north side of Brisbane and it is ultimately failing the national economy. Australians want this government to take serious action now and to grow the job opportunities for the young people of today and of tomorrow.

Under this government there are 15,000 fewer apprentices and trainees and a shortage of workers in critical services, including plumbing, carpentry, hairdressing and motor mechanics. The number of Australians doing an apprenticeship or traineeship is lower today than it was a decade ago. The independent National Centre for Vocational Education Research recently found that over the past year 20 per cent fewer people were signing up to do trade apprenticeships and traineeships. This was even more extreme in a number of essential trades. The number of Australians starting an apprenticeship or traineeship in construction, including carpentry, bricklaying and plumbing, dropped by an alarming 40 per cent. There are more people dropping out of vocational training courses than there are finishing them. These numbers have to get better, not only for the economy but for the young people who a decade ago would have been undertaking this training but are not today. As the Leader of the Opposition outlined in his vision statement on emerging from the shadow of COVID-19, we need to support people to train. For many young people, that will mean a liveable youth allowance payment.

Over the past two months, I have been contacted by students who are desperate for assistance but who are unable to access anything from this government's COVID-19 assistance package. What makes a government exclude young people during a national crisis? On what metric does this funding need to be restored? We need serious investment in VET, a sector that will be vital to the economic recovery that our nation is about to embark upon. We had skills shortages before COVID-19. As we recover, we will need a strong and well-funded VET system to train and upskill our workforce so they can participate in this new economy. If people come to be unemployed because of this crisis—and we know that one million Australians who weren't unemployed at the start of 2020 will be by the end of 2020—then we need to enable them to easily access new training opportunities and skill them for work.

Now is the time for this House to act. The parliament is together to make amendments and to make good reform in this space. I urge the government to reconsider and to put together more significant amendments to this bill so that we can support our TAFE sector.

Ben Morton (Tangney, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister and Cabinet) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the debate be adjourned and the resumption of the debate made an order of the day for a later hour this day.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion to adjourn the debate be agreed to.