Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business. Will the minister please update the House on how the Morrison government's JobMaker skills plan will aid Australia's economic comeback by creating more opportunities for Australians through retraining and upskilling?

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Berowra for his question. In my role as minister, I am out all the time speaking to many businesses in a whole range of industry sectors. Nearly all of them say they are so relieved that this government is putting skills and skills development at the centre of our economic agenda. Just the other week, at a forum that was hosted by the member for Berowra, I was speaking to a number of manufacturers as well as across a wider range of industry. Skills investment was one of the things that was raised consistently at that meeting. They know, like we know, that without a skilled workforce we are not going to be able to capitalise on the opportunities that are available to us as we come back from COVID-19 and we won't be as strong as we need to be.

But it wasn't the COVID pandemic that started us looking at VET reform. That work was underway well before COVID-19. That's why we have been able to invest about $7 billion in the vocational education sector this year alone. We will concentrate on making sure that we have skilled workers who, importantly, are job ready. That's what many businesses are asking for. They want their students, their future employees, to come through the vocational education and skills sector with their training and be ready to start work as soon as they possibly can, and we are very committed to making the necessary investments to make sure that happens. We are prepared to put money where it is most desperately needed, and vocational education and skills is an area that it has been so important for us to invest in, because we got to inherit the Labor legacy which, quite frankly, was not a good legacy. It was a particularly poor legacy that we were left and it has taken us a number of years to get vocational education and training back on track.

What I can say is that this government had a tremendous task when we took government, because we had to remedy all of the mistakes, all of the errors, that Labor had made when they were last in government. And what I can say is that when the vocational education and skills sector needed money, Labor cut it—cut after cut after cut. (Time expired)