Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak today in support of the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill 2022. The bill establishes Jobs and Skills Australia as a statutory body to provide independent advice on current, emerging and future workforce skills and training needs. This is important. We need to start planning better. It replaces the National Skills Commissioner. The key difference in scope of the organisation is the remit of Jobs and Skills Australia to undertake workforce planning and research future industries and opportunities. I support this bill because, as highlighted at the jobs and skills summit, collaboration across all sectors and workforce planning are critical to addressing both the immediate labour market issues and skills shortages in some areas.

We know these shortages are both immediate and forecast for the future in the long term. They're both geographical and sectoral. In some areas we have high unemployment, and we have underemployment in others. We have a critical shortage of workers in certain industries in areas like Warringah. It's true in cities and regional centres alike. In my electorate of Warringah, businesses and chambers of commerce, especially in hospitality and retail, are crying out for workers, yet in other electorates such as Fowler, just on the other side of the city, there's over 10 per cent unemployment. Clearly there is a disconnect in how our employment services are working at the moment. We need to look at ways to bridge the barriers to relocation for work and the affordability of transport to better connect workers with where the jobs are available.

During the recent Jobs and Skills Summit, I would say government supported much talk around migration, and that was mostly the elements and actions that came away from it, but, whilst I raised the question that we must first address housing and infrastructure, there really was very little focus on that. We need long-term planning. To plan for the long term and for a future workforce that addresses the key labour market challenges of decarbonisation and ageing population, participation rates for women and First Nations people that must rise, digitisation of nearly all professions and the rise of AI. We need an agency that coordinates a system of education and training support for workers as they navigate a portfolio of jobs and careers throughout their working lives.

As a mother of teenagers and university students, I'm well aware that our current young people are being told they will have several careers—not just several jobs but several careers—in their working lifetime. We need to make sure the education system is actually preparing them for that. We know workers won't have a job for life. We cannot even imagine the jobs of the future, so we need to implement an adaptive and dynamic process to ensure Australia thrives, developing the skills required. We know two-thirds of Australia's top 50 economists have said that education and skills was a top issue that needed to be addressed at the jobs and skills summary. I would have to say I was a little disappointed with my time there. I was there Thursday afternoon and Friday. There was very little discussion about education, in particular around the university sector and what was going to be done to support and increase its capacity to meet those skills and education needs.

We must develop research and development capabilities to capitalise on the opportunities in our industries. I raised, during the Jobs and Skills Summit, just how far Australia is falling behind when it comes to innovation and R&D. Research and development makes up only 1.8 per cent of Australia's GDP; in comparable nations in the OECD, it's some 2.5. We are falling behind, and we won't be competitive in the world of the future.

The government needs to set the guidelines for what our industries are and provide the necessary incentives for investment to congregate around those skills and research and development. Jobs and Skills Australia improves on the National Skills Commissioner in its remit to undertake research into and analysis of emerging and growing industries, such as the green economy and areas such as carbon sequestration, clean energy and green manufacturing. These are all huge opportunities, and at the Jobs and Skills Summit we heard discussion around the megatrends report as to global trends in terms of future skills. We need to start growing and training the workforce required to develop these industries, and—whilst I acknowledge that there are shortages now that need to be addressed, and I know the government is looking at those through a migration lens—we must also develop those skills locally. We must ensure education and opportunity exist here at home.

Obviously, there have been disruptions to skilled labour supply because of COVID and closed borders, and there's a disconnect between Australia's skills acquisition and training system, including through migration, and the needs of industry. And we know that disconnect is widening.

But the big issue I want to raise is women's workforce participation. We have also seen barriers to using our most skilled and trained labour force, which is women. And for too long it's been a side story—a story that, in this place, gets mentioned occasionally but never really focused on. We had the pink budget to try and remedy the blokes' budget under the last government. But, with an increased number of women in this place, I'm very, very focused on making sure that women's participation in the workforce is absolutely made a top economic priority of this government.

We know that it's fairly equitable for women in the workforce until they have children, and then the slide starts—then the discrepancies and the discrimination and disadvantage start, because women are required to bear that much heavier burden. There are so many structural barriers to women rejoining the workforce after childbirth. Paid parental leave needs to be increased, as do the incentives for partners to take up parental leave and share a greater proportion of caring duties. Child care needs to be made more affordable and accessible. And we know there are critical workforce shortages in those very sectors, creating even more barriers to that participation. We know there are workforce shortages prevalent across our highly-gendered care economy, so better understanding those needs of the childcare sector is incredibly important.

It was interesting that, at the Jobs and Skills Summit, while there was a nearly universal call for improving parental leave and childcare costs, it's the one area the government refused to actually move on when it came to an immediate action plan. From 1 January, child care should be made more affordable. There should be no delay in implementing those measures. And, knowing that there is a budget coming, I call on the Albanese government to act on making child care more affordable for women, to enable them to participate more in the workforce. Ensure that there is more than just talk: that there is action.

There are potential improvements to the bill. The legislative requirement for collaboration is good, but I wonder if this requirement should extend to the tertiary education sector. At the end of the day, we won't develop that skilled workforce without engaging with the education sector. Universities Australia highlighted in their submission to the inquiry that there could be a case for section 10(c) of this bill to be amended to explicitly include universities and the tertiary education sector as key stakeholders to be consulted—particularly given recent research by the National Skills Commission suggesting that nearly all new jobs will require a post-secondary qualification and lifelong learning. This addition would reflect the importance of lifelong learning but also Australia's commitment to upskilling its workforce, in conjunction with a skilled migration strategy, to address the current skill shortages. There needs to be that kind of long-term planning. Now, I know that the previous government really attacked the tertiary education sector, making changes that have made it incredibly difficult for young people to pursue those education goals, and I think these are some of the aspects that really need to be reviewed. So I do support this bill on the understanding of the need to enact an interim measure with detail on a permanent model to follow.

The collaboration and consultation between stakeholders is ultimately key, and we need to understand the mechanism for that and who will have a seat at the table, so I call on the government to acknowledge the call that the university and education sector have that seat at the table.

I welcome the start to a complex and critical issue. We need to look forward to seeing further detail on this, on the structure and composition of Jobs and Skills Australia, and I look forward to seeing the Albanese government move on important issues like parental leave and childcare support, increasing those cost. We need to remove the barriers to over 50 per cent of our population truly, fully participating in the workforce. As a professional woman, I find it incredible that in 2022 I am still having to push for that, that we still have to argue for that. I know, with many women on this crossbench and in this parliament, this is not a topic that we are going to drop. Many women around Australia have said, 'Enough,' and it is time that we remove those barriers to participation.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill 2022, a very important bill introduced as the very first piece of legislation of the 47th Parliament by the Albanese government. This government is wasting no time in getting on with the business of government and delivering on its election commitment in establishing Jobs and Skills Australia. It's a solid reflection of where our legislative priorities are, and I want to thank the Minister for Skills and Training, the honourable Brendan O'Connor, for taking immediate action to help address the significant skills and labour shortages by introducing both the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill and the parallel bill to the House.

We've had nearly a decade of lost opportunities with successive Liberal-National governments residing over the decline of some of our most important national industries, not least of which is Australia's local manufacturing. This decline wasn't an accident of fate. Nobody is more aware of this reality of decline than the people of my electorate of Calwell, a community that was once home to our very proud automotive manufacturing industry before, as we all know, the previous coalition government shut it down. This was a result of deliberate calculated policies driven by an ideology and a government that spoke of Australian jobs and Australian workers in rhetoric only, all the while targeting Australian workers and the unions at the expense of addressing some of our most pressing economic challenges.

We can now see its effect. The smoothed four-quarter average estimates relating to unemployment data have shown my electorate of Calwell to have amongst the highest rates of unemployment across Australia. At the same time, according to the latest OECD economic outlook, Australia is experiencing the second-most severe labour shortages in the developed world. This double edged reality is because we've had an economy presided over by a coalition government that ignored sector shocks and the state of Australia's skills when it came to areas such as manufacturing and the new economy. Such is the myopic view of jobs and the economy from those opposite that their impact has been wide and far-reaching, especially in my own electorate.

In their ideological potholes they failed, while in government, to see that a skilled workforce is a more productive workforce and that, if you put in place policies that shock entire sectors, there is a need to ensure that those workers are reskilled so that they can continue to contribute to our future economic growth. What I find most encouraging about these bills is not only the preparing capacity studies for industries and the review of the training of vocational sector but the commitment to undertake specific plans for targeted groups. For my community especially, these include older workers who need to retrain or upskill, having been victims to industry decline and shut downs as well as our young people, in particular, our young women, who need to be not only trained but also given the confidence to build their future within the emerging and growing industries of the future economy. I'm hopeful and confident that Jobs and Skills Australia will look to futureproof our economy through a workforce and skills analysis that creates a pathway to the jobs of the future as well as to those needed today—to the current and emerging sectors and industries that will help drive our future economic growth. By that, Mr Deputy Speaker, I mean real and active workforce planning with an active approach to addressing skills and training to help support the vital sectors.

These are the issues most important to the people of my electorate and to our national economy. It's heartening to see that we as a government are starting off our national agenda with a focus on Australia's labour market. It was the first policy announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as Leader of the Opposition and it's the first piece of legislation introduced by him as Prime Minister.

The previous government's decade of inaction was made worse by its approach to skilled migration. As Deputy Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration in the previous parliament, I saw the inadequacies of previous approaches firsthand. The committee's inquiry into Australia's skilled migration program took place at a time when labour market gaps were emerging while our borders were shut as a result of the COVID pandemic. Instead of recommending that the government identify skills shortages and deliver urgent training and reskilling opportunities to Australian workers so that they could fill these jobs, the then government members turned to temporary migration as a short-term fix and solution. It was a missed opportunity to rethink our skilled migration program and to help create real, impactful change in two areas very close to my own heart and interest: migration and national skills and jobs policies.

What was the result? Data from the National Skills Commission shows that the number of vacancies listed in Melbourne was 65.8 per cent higher in April 2022 compared to its prepandemic level. Yet we have industry uncertainty across the board. We have skilled workers pleading to be retrained or upskilled into job opportunities in areas that will fuel our economic growth into the future. It's amazing how informed one can become simply by speaking to ordinary men and women working on shop floors across industry sites. It is their capacity to help shape our future economy that we should use to inform and drive policy on skills and labour shortages.

This bill is a beginning, which is why I am pleased that this bill lays the foundation for second-stage legislation for a permanent structure and governance arrangements that are informed by employers, unions and education providers. That's what we need—a tripartite approach to skills and training supported by a government committed to addressing Australia's current, emerging and future labour market needs and delivering on the policies to meet those needs. It is indeed just the beginning of our commitments in this area, with a further suite of policies designed to make real, impactful change. These policies include the Australian skills guarantee, which will ensure one in 10 workers on major federally funded government projects is an apprentice, trainee or cadet. This translates to a commitment to training thousands of workers. Our fee-free TAFE policy will deliver 465,000 fee-free TAFE places, including 45,000 new places that include those for students studying in industries of national importance and industries facing skills shortages. The TAFE Technology Fund will ensure that at least 70 per cent of Commonwealth and VET funding is for public TAFE. Public TAFE has been the backbone of training for our young and mature-age workers and in skilling and reskilling, and I'm absolutely delighted that this government has placed public TAFE at the centre of our programs going forward.

A number of commitments made as part of the government's $1.2 billion A Future Made in Australia skills plan will help close the gap on key areas of skills shortage, and the new energy apprenticeships will encourage Australians to train in the new energy jobs of the future and will provide the additional support they need to complete their training. That's a funding commitment of $100 million to support 10,000 new energy apprenticeships and a new energy skills program to develop fit-for-purpose training pathways for new energy industry jobs. I note that, rather than shooting from the hip, we will be a consultative government, working in partnership with the states and territories, industry and unions to support this progressive agenda to prioritise growth and investment in the renewable energy sector.

I saw how these policies are inspiring confidence on the ground last night, when I had the opportunity to speak online at an event called Women in Trades, which was held in Broadmeadows in my electorate. I want to thank AMWU Victoria for the amazing work that they are doing in working towards getting more women into the trades. I also want to acknowledge the support of a very fine TAFE institution in my electorate, the Kangan Institute; the federal government's National Careers Institute; and all our local employers, career practitioners and tradeswomen, who were represented yesterday and who were there to give young women an opportunity to ask questions about their futures should they pursue a trade.

We don't need to increase the representation of women in manufacturing, but we do need to increase the representation of women in the manufacturing trades. The work and initiatives of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union in supporting workers across the manufacturing and trades sector is to be commended. I look forward to working far more closely with the AMWU and other unions that share a common purpose in training young people, especially young women. A big thank you goes to Courteney Nunn, who is AMWU Victoria's Careers for Women in Trades Project Officer, for the work she has done so far in helping women advance in historically male-dominated trades and industries and explaining to young women that this is a genuine career option for them.

Ours is a government that will look to prepare Australians for the jobs of the future, to improve the quality of work and to tackle issues of underemployment, casualisation, job insecurity, long-term unemployment and stagnant wages. I certainly welcome these measures and look forward to working with all the relevant ministers and the government and helping contribute to shaping these policy frameworks, because, ultimately, they are to the benefit of the people in my electorate and to the benefit of Australia as a whole. I commend this bill to the House.

Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak today in support of the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill 2022. I support this bill because it will provide a plan and a road map at a time of great challenges, change and opportunity. However, in this context, as I said at the recent Jobs and Skills Summit, I am advocating for direct and achievable actions, particularly when it comes to women in the workforce. At a moment when we have more women in this parliament and indeed on this crossbench than ever before, we must not let this moment slip past with talk and without action. I, for one, will not. Empowering women to work must cut across all legislation, and all policy and legislation forthwith should include a gender impact statement. As I said at the summit, women are done with being secondary. This legislation is highly relevant to this conversation. Jobs and Skills Australia and its commissioner must be laser focused on empowering women to enter the workforce. At a time when we have chronic workforce shortages, there's no better time to finally shift this dial.

The good news is that we know how to do it. The minister says that Jobs and Skills Australia will have an important role in planning, forecasting and developing a pipeline for skilled workers—great. More good news: we already have them. Our women are an untapped resource. As the Grattan Institute's Danielle Wood said at the Jobs and Skills Summit:

I can't help but reflect that if untapped women's workforce participation was a massive ore deposit, we would have governments lining up to give tax concessions to get it out of the ground—

the quote of the year! Women around Australia nodded their heads furiously, I'm sure.

Businesses large and small across my electorate of Goldstein are crying out for staff. So what can we do? The government's childcare measures must be brought forward. If we can afford stage 3 tax cuts, we can afford this. The numbers say that expanded child care would contribute billions to economic growth. These changes to child care, though, must cater for women who do not work nine to five Monday to Friday. Tens of thousands of women cannot access child care due to irregular and short shifts. Government, business and unions need to reach agreement to ensure that major employers upgrade their rostering so that part-time and casual workers know their work hours ahead of time and can plan their care responsibilities. No woman should be left behind. Getting more women working, at their full capacity, is central to a healthy society while improving productivity and, in the current circumstances, alleviating workforce pressures.

Despite all the progress that we've made, women still tend to be the ones who stay home or work part time, because they usually earn less, and when child care is expensive, inflexible or unavailable that becomes the default position. This is not good for fathers, in heterosexual families, either. Traditionally, being the family breadwinner creates a habit in which men find it hard to stay home with the baby, because they commonly have a higher income than their partner. Only true equality will create real choice for men and women in this space.

Highly feminised care industries must be revalued. This means closing the gender wage gap by recognising the importance of their jobs, and then providing cheap, accessible child care and early childhood education so that both women and children—indeed, families—can thrive. Currently, women in feminised industries with a bachelor's degree or a certificate IV earn roughly a third less than men in male dominated industries. This is not because they don't work hard or add just as much value; this is simply a societal mindset issue. And it's time to change it. This is where Jobs and Skills Australia can channel its energy.

Recent data from a partnership between Chief Executive Women and Impact Economics and Policy found that increasing women's participation in the paid workforce would address Australia's current skills shortage and have a long-lasting impact on productivity. The study found that engaging women in paid work at the same rate as men could unlock an additional one million full-time skilled workers. Grattan Institute data also estimates that a six per cent increase in female workforce participation would add $25 billion to Australian GDP. Yet we continue to focus on the cost of child care rather than the blindingly obvious opportunity that is staring us in the face.

There is also the opportunity to enable women to retrain, with subsidised study in mid-life and possibly a study wage to enable families to cover financial commitments while expanding skills. We also need to consider the fact that the current structure of the workforce means many women do not work nine to five and are grappling with short and fragmented shifts that, in many cases, make working more expensive than not working, due to the cost of care.

The sandwich generation, in which women are frequently caring for not only children but also elderly parents, also requires consideration and flexibility to enable women to work while managing their personal responsibilities. Paid parental leave must also be expanded and superannuation paid on it, in order to close the gap between women and men. At the jobs summit I suggested amendments to the Fair Work Act to strengthen an employee's capacity to request flexible arrangements. Currently, a request can be made by an employee but no appeal is available. Women of the sandwich generation are caring for children and elderly parents, and true flexibility is key. There's also a need to improve the unpaid parental leave provisions in the Fair Work Act to make them more flexible and shareable.

Jobs and Skills Australia must also focus on apprenticeships in feminised industries. Apprenticeships are traditionally male dominated. We must not be blind to this. Australia's fashion industry, for example, has had out-sized success overseas. Foster it. Women should get a fair crack at apprenticeships, if that is a focus of this government.

We must also develop a strategy now to channel girls and women into the industries that will emerge from the coming renewables revolution. If we don't, we'll have yet another trades based sector that is neither attractive nor, indeed, safe for women. We need our girls talking about working in renewable energy and climate risk mitigation industries with their parents around the dinner table. We need these discussions happening in schools from an early age. Girls care about climate and they want to do something. It's incumbent on us and Jobs and Skills Australia to foster those girls.

I will say this: we must equalise the conversation that often focuses on hard infrastructure like roads and bridges and shift our gaze to our growing service industries, the biggest growth areas of our economy.

I also placed on the jobs summit agenda pay gap transparency, and I was pleased to see it included in the summit communique. This is a space for Jobs and Skills Australia to administer and monitor performance reporting for employers, public and private. Transparency on performance on the gender pay gap, women in leadership and workforce flexibility is appropriate. This transparency has led to substantial pay gap reductions in other countries. In Denmark, for example, this simple measure led to a 13 per cent increase in women's wages. This is a no-cost measure that creates natural competition between organisations, public and private. In my view, it should be led by the Commonwealth Public Service as a leader of best practice.

I close by saying that lip-service has been paid to equality and safety for women. That is a big part of why I'm standing here. This representation deserves and requires substantive action. I look forward to Jobs and Skills Australia delivering on this. Rest assured that I will remain the squeaky wheel throughout my time in this parliament as an advocate for the empowerment of women and girls.

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

There is no bigger issue for our economy and our society at the at the moment than the skills shortage that we face. That is why the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill 2022 was the first bill introduced by this government, that is why the issues raised by this bill were central to the Jobs and Skills Summit that was so successfully held last week and that is why it is so important that this bill passes through this House and why I'm so pleased to speak in favour of it.

The skills shortage that we are facing creates many issues for our economy. First and foremost, it adds to already existing inflationary pressures which in and of themselves are creating so many issues for households and businesses across our community. Secondly, the skills shortage is impeding the growth of businesses and corporations throughout our economy and hampering the ability of not-for-profits and, indeed, government to provide services. This is something which I'm all too familiar with, having held a roundtable in my electorate in the lead-up to the Jobs and Skills Summit. I heard from businesses that are very successful already and wish to grow but are not able to. So, clearly, the skills shortage we are experiencing is a significant handbrake on our economy at this point.

The other dimension of the skills shortage which I think is of first order importance is that it means that we are not matching people to positions in the way that we should. When the labour market is not working effectively, we aren't using people's skills and we aren't giving people the opportunities that they deserve to reach their potential in the best way possible in the workforce and, more broadly, in society.

This skills shortage is having so many negative effects both for our economy and socially. We see this in a range of statistics. Seventeen per cent of businesses reported recently that they did not have enough employees. Many of those businesses are not able to easily acquire the employees through the labour market that they need in order to grow. This is a first-order-of-importance issue and it's not something that we're going to be able to turn around immediately, but this government has taken action on a whole range of fronts already. As has been discussed, very broadly, there are a whole raft, dozens, of positive actions that have come out of the Jobs and Skills Summit. But there is so much more to do, and this is an example of the longer term changes that are needed in order to get our job market working more effectively.

Another issue which I think is worth putting on the table for context is that our labour market is changing. We have this short- and medium-term skills shortage, but we also have a labour market that is changing, where people are going to be expected to have many more jobs or occupations throughout their lives. It is estimated by some that Australians will have as many as 13 occupations across their lifetimes, very different to the experience that so many had in the period following World War II and before that. If you're under 25, others have estimated you are likely to have 17 employers across your career. This is, again, reinforcing the importance of our training institutions. Our training institutions are going to be front and centre when it comes to overcoming the skills shortage, because they will be critical to training people up who can fill the positions our job market is currently unable to fill. Our training institutions, our VET institutions and, indeed, our higher education institutions are going to be absolutely critical when it comes to helping people navigate a career and a life cycle where they have so many more jobs and occupations.

Now, of course, what I talked about there is a raft of statistics, which can become very sterile, but what I'm also very conscious of is that what we're talking about here are opportunities and quality of life for real people. My interaction with the skills sector of late has reinforced that to me. When I walk around Victoria University's St Albans campus and see the cybersecurity training facility that is giving kids an opportunity to be trained in cert III and IV courses in cyber, what I see is people being given an opportunity to enter the labour market in areas where their training will allow them to get good-quality jobs and in a sector that is going to be growing for decades to come.

When I was fortunate to represent the Minister for Skills and Training, Minister O'Connor, recently at William Angliss, I met somebody in the kitchen who was providing a remarkable lunch for all of the people in attendance to celebrate skills week, and she was from my electorate. It reinforced to me that what we're talking about isn't just numbers and statistics; when we talk about fixing the skills shortage and training people up so they can take advantage of opportunities in the labour force, we're talking about giving people opportunities. These are people who are just finishing school and trying to enter the labour market. It is such a difficult hurdle. And, of course, so many people need to change their career. So many people's firm might have closed, or their skills might have been automated out of existence. So many people are in industries that might be in decline. There are often middle-aged people who are particularly vulnerable; they also need a well-functioning labour market and need skills.

For me, what we're talking about today is so important for individuals and for families—and often for the most vulnerable individuals and families. To get this right means incredible things for people in electorates like mine and the people that I've met at skills functions and training facilities. Indeed, employers reinforce that to me every day that I'm in my electorate.

What does it mean to set up Jobs and Skills Australia, an entity that will provide advice to government along many dimensions but which for me will, critically, dramatically improve the quality of data that is provided to government. This is an area where data is absolutely paramount. Why is that? Sometimes we describe different parts of our economy as markets. I'm probably more guilty of that than most, being an economist by training. But I'll not describe this as a market; I will describe it as an ecosystem where a number of actors have to make decisions that are very complicated. The people who are seeking training—students-to-be or existing students—are making decisions about what courses to do that are based upon their expectation of jobs in the future, on their judgement as to what types of jobs they will like and their expectations as to where the economy will evolve in the future. Those choices are very difficult for individuals to make. The more information individuals have about where jobs exist and are ready for people to enter and the more information students have about where jobs and industries are emerging and growing, the better the decisions they will be able to make. It is absolutely critical for individuals, students or students-to-be that they have the best information possible.

Then, of course, there are the providers of services. It is absolutely critical that the system works well so they have the best information about which jobs are emerging. For a TAFE or a VET provider in a community to know that a large employer or a sector is growing in their community means that they can pivot and offer a course that provides students with the skills necessary to enter that growing firm or cluster of firms. It is absolutely critical that we provide the best possible data to the people providing training.

Next, of course, there's government. Government needs the best data possible in terms of both the existing labour market and also, of course, forecasting where the labour is going—an extremely difficult thing to do. Forecasts are extremely important for government because government is often making long-term investments. It is critical that the government makes those investments with the best possible understanding of how the labour market is evolving.

Jobs and Skills Australia is being set up to help all of those different parts of the labour market ecosystem—students and people who might soon be students, the providers of services and, of course, government, which is a critical funder of so much of the training that goes on in the sector. Of course, employers are another important part of that. These Jobs and Skills Australia bills will put in place the first stage of a two-stage process. There are a number of things it is absolutely imperative we get underway right now. This legislation will do that. It will establish the machinery of Jobs and Skills Australia, it will establish the Jobs and Skills Australia Director and it will set up an organisation that can hit the ground running and provide a number of important services, such as producing data, producing workforce forecasts, producing capacity studies, informing the public and putting in place mechanisms whereby the data that is produced can be not only provided to government but also shared with users, providers of services and employers. That is critical. There's not much point producing high-quality data if you don't set up mechanisms to share that data.

In addition to Jobs and Skills Australia being set up so that it can hit the ground running and provide data where needed immediately—and there are a number of different areas where government is undertaking services where this data will be needed immediately—it's also critical that there is a two-stage process because there are elements of the ultimate architecture that the government wants to consult on. There is going to be exhaustive consultation on a number of elements of the ultimate governance architecture that government will now consult on before a second tranche of legislation is introduced. It is absolutely important that we start this process. We will see results from JSA being implemented very quickly indeed, which is very necessary.

I think it's also important to put on the record that in this first tranche of legislation Jobs and Skills Australia will replace the functions undertaken by the National Skills Commission and will expand on those functions to include a broader and more strategic focus. The work of Jobs and Skills Australia will be economywide and will not be limited to VET. This will be absolutely imperative to the advisory functions, the data-collecting functions and the forecasting functions that it undertakes.

The legislation does not limit the scope of the work that Jobs and Skills Australia will undertake. Clearly it will set out a number of functions that Jobs and Skills Australia will have to undertake in relation to informing the VET sector and informing those people who interact with the VET sector—students, employers and service providers. It is important to put on the record that the way in which it will operate will not be limited in scope and that Jobs and Skills Australia will have the capacity to look at the jobs market and the skills required in our economy much more broadly. It will be able to look at, for example, the university sector and the way in which skills are developing and the demand for skills is changing right across the economy.

That is absolutely critical because we have an economy where people are going to be moving between different types of post secondary school training. Some students will have an interaction with the university sector and then have an interaction with the VET sector midcareer to obtain some additional skills if they need to pivot. Some people will start with VET and undertake further VET down the track. We need an advisor to government—Jobs and Skills Australia—that is capable of broadening its focus where necessary.

This is extremely important legislation. This is an extremely important institution that we are establishing today. It is an overdue reform. It is critical at this point in the economic cycle that this government prioritises significant, meaningful, substantive reform in this area.

As I mentioned at the start of this speech, we can talk about any number of macroeconomic statistics in relation to why the skills shortage is so important in the economy at the moment: it is inflationary; it is hampering growth in a number of sectors; it is limiting the opportunities for individuals in a number of sectors; and it is creating suboptimal and inefficient matches in a number of areas. But, for me, moving beyond these statistics, there are the individual stories as well. These are the people I've been meeting in my electorate in my everyday interactions but also even more intensely in the lead-up to the Jobs and Skills Summit. It's for those people, who need opportunities, who need to get the best possible start after finishing school or who need opportunities after they've suffered an unfortunate mid-career disruption, that we need to do everything we can as a government to get our labour force working more efficiently. I'm very pleased to speak in favour of this bill today.

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Jobs and Skills Australia Bill 2022 will establish Jobs and Skills Australia, a statutory body which will advise and publish data on Australia's current and emerging labour market and skills needs and priorities. With its sister bill, the Jobs and Skills Australia (National Skills Commissioner Repeal) Bill 2022, it will repeal the National Skills Commissioner Act, which performed similar functions when it was established in 2020, with a focus on the workforce outcomes and training courses from the vocational education and training system.

Jobs and Skills Australia will research workforce trends using data, evidence and analysis to provide impartial advice to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and the Minister for Skills and Training. The goal is for the government to better match investment in training and education with industry needs. As a former rural health researcher, I'm committed to ensuring that decisions made by government are based on data and evidence. It's positive that this agency will be collecting data to inform decisions in this crucial area.

It's absolutely crucial that we understand what data points we need to collect. The government is promising this agency will be dedicated to consultation, including with employers, unions, state and territory governments and the training and education sector, in developing outcomes. It's crucial to do this because we need to ask the right questions to determine the data we need to answer those questions. We need to be able to analyse, to interpret, to find meaning, to adapt and to review again in order to find the answers we're seeking. We need to include people with disability. We need to include people on the margins in thinking about how we ask the questions to find the jobs and skills answers we're looking for. This is positive. Improving the number of quality jobs in Australia is vital to growing our economy, and it won't happen without improving our skills and training in Australia.

This bill repeals the National Skills Commission, an agency that's existed for less than two years. In fact, it's just over two years since I stood in this place and spoke on that bill. The added challenges we face in regional and rural Australia, especially when it comes to vocational education and training, have only grown. Everywhere I go across my electorate of Indi, people speak to me about jobs and skills. Those constituents, those businesses and those organisations that employ them are facing enormous challenges. Across the board, in our large regional centres, in our bustling tourist hotspots, in small towns, employers are struggling to find staff. Job ads go unanswered or the staff available don't have the required skills.

There are also notable times when employers find someone willing to take up a job, perhaps moving from Melbourne or Sydney or another regional town to make a tree change, but it's simply impossible to find somewhere to live. This is happening again and again, whether it's a brewery, whether it's a school, whether it's a medical practice, whether it's a meatworks, whether it's a logistics trucking company.

This is a very different challenge to that faced in many other areas of Australia. In Indi the unemployment rate is below the already historically low national unemployment rate. People are not talking to me about creating jobs; they're talking to me about filling jobs, about how the lack of workers and housing for workers is dampening productivity. It is forcing restaurants to leave tables empty due to a lack of staff and other businesses to knock back clients because they know they simply can't fulfil orders. It's my hope that this agency will take a holistic look at jobs and skills in this country and all of the drivers and barriers that come into this, especially in rural and regional Australia, where the issues we face are, indeed, quite different to those in the cities.

Unfortunately, though, I must say that this bill repeats a mistake from the initial National Skills Commission legislation from just two years ago which I will seek to rectify. I will move an amendment to the bill to include an additional function of JSA to provide specific advice to the minister and secretary in relation to skills, issues, training and workforce needs in rural, regional and remote Australia.

The barriers that constituents like mine face are different, as I've said, to those in metro centres. Likewise, our skills and training opportunities and workforce development needs are unique and require a dedicated focus. In reviewing this bill, I was concerned to see that this rural and regional focus was not carried across into the new body. I was also concerned that, while the explanatory memorandum said that the JSA will be required to consult and work genuinely with key stakeholders including regional organisations, regional organisations were not actually included as a key stakeholder in the bill. For too long regional Australia has been sidelined in the policy-making process as an afterthought or represented by a headline statement. This isn't good enough. As a parliament, we need to show our constituents that they are not forgotten and that they'll not be left behind as we prepare our workforce for the future.

I moved a similar amendment to the National Skills Commissioner Bill 2020 which was voted down by the former government, including the National Party, who claim to represent the interests of regional Australians. Imagine my surprise when the bill returned from the Senate with a near-identical coalition amendment which mirrored my amendment! This eventually became law, and I was very pleased to support it. I'll always support good policy that backs regional Australia and my electorate of Indi irrespective of where it came from. However, I noted that the former government only supported regional Australia when the arithmetic was against them. So it was disappointing that they weren't on the front foot with regional communities like mine, and I'm seeing this again which is why I seek to change it. This needs to change, and it needs to change now with this government. There are massive opportunities in regions like Indi that can be unlocked if we have the right data, information and advice to back robust bills, training and workforce development policies.

I'm very pleased to have had constructive discussions with the Minister for Skills and Training and his team about this amendment. I'm also very grateful for the involvement from the member for Kennedy, another longstanding representative of rural, regional and remote Australia. The town of Julia Creek in his electorate is classified as remote. They have a brand-new medical centre but they can't get a GP, and this is simply terrible and, ultimately, unacceptable. I look forward to continuing to be a strong voice alongside the member for Kennedy to make sure our regional workforce is not forgotten.

While we have challenges in my rural and regional electorate of Indi, we also have some really terrific, innovative programs that are opening doors for our willing workforce, and the JSA would be very, very well placed to have a look at these programs. The Country Universities Centres in Wangaratta, Mansfield and Corryong provide opportunities for people to study courses at universities across the country while staying close to their rural home. These centres provide state-of-the-art study space, an informal area where students can gather and bond, including a student kitchen; space for tutorials; video conferencing; good, solid, effective internet. Students have access to campus-level technology, facilities, tutors, supportive administration, academic staff and, importantly, a network of fellow students. This opens up a whole world of higher education to people who previously needed to move far away from home or leave their employment or leave their families to access it.

The Girls of Steel program in Wangaratta provides women with a Certificate II in Engineering Pathways and a Certificate I in Work Skills. It aims to open up job pathways for women in engineering, a sector that is predominantly male. The course is project based, including the manufacturing of park furniture for councils, sculptures, trailers, signposts, bespoke letterboxes—you name it. I've met with the program director, Brendan Ritchens, who exemplifies the very, very best in innovation and the very, very best in including people from the margins and the very, very best in ensuring that that enormous, great big, untapped workforce in skills such as engineering—women—are included.

I note with encouragement that the member for Fraser talked about the multiple jobs that people will be taking on in the future. When I was at the Jobs and Skills Summit last week we heard a lot about the skills needed for now and the skills needed for the near future. While I'm pleased that the government has increased the number of free TAFE places, we need to do a whole lot more in our TAFEs around ageing infrastructure. We simply can't take on skills development in rural and regional TAFEs for these jobs of the future while we've got 1970s infrastructure. I was recently at GOTAFE in Wangaratta, speaking with Travis Heeney, and I'm often at the Wodonga TAFE, speaking with the CEO, Phil Paterson, and repeatedly I see ageing infrastructure. If we wish to train our rural and regional workforce for the huge transformation that renewables are going to be in rural and regional areas, we need to have the infrastructure in those TAFEs that can allow our students to work on batteries, to work on electric vehicles had to work on renewable technology more broadly.

I speak to employers who are dedicated to training and retaining their staff—bosses who take on apprentices and trainees, giving them a foot in the door to a lifelong career. I commend them. I speak to people every day who love their jobs and who are looking for opportunities to improve their skills and secure themselves a career pathway which will give them security and fulfilment. And they want to stay in the regions. I also speak to many young people who want to find a secure, well-paid job close to home in the country towns where they grew up. Students at our local university—La Trobe University in Wodonga—at CSU, at TAFE and on school campuses right across Indi are leading innovative programs, and I really encourage JSA to consult with these groups when establishing what their dataset should be.

Rural and regional Australia is ready for the workforce of the future if we put in the support that it needs. We have the energy, we have the commitment, we have the vision and we have the smart people; we do need the infrastructure and we do need to be included very, very carefully in the analysis of jobs and skills. I want to see this government step in and support the hardworking students, workers and employers to realise the incredible full potential of rural and regional Australia and truly build our economic prosperity.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If there were ever a day to be debating the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill 2022 in our parliament, it's today. Today we have the early childhood education sector in Australia taking a big, bold step to close childcare centres early. One of the main reasons why is because they're stressed, overworked and struggling because they don't have enough skilled staff to fill vacancies and to help them educate our youngest Australians. Today is also the day we thank our aged-care workforce for the amazing work that they do—another sector that is struggling with workloads, lack of staff and facilities. Quite often they raise with us—as do the union and the workforce—that they can't find enough skilled workers to work in the sector. And yesterday was National TAFE Day, when we celebrated the role that the public institution of TAFE plays in our country.

Those are three examples, just from today and yesterday, that demonstrate why this bill before us is so critical. We are in a skills crisis in our country. It's not something that happened just because of the pandemic and it's not something that happened because Labor won the last federal election. It didn't just happen since May, it's been building in our country for the best part of a decade—nearly a decade of inaction by the previous government: a decade of cuts, a decade of mismanagement and a decade of chaos that was created that exacerbated the problem. This was exacerbated particularly by what they did during the pandemic: decisions that the previous government made, like not extending JobKeeper to casual workers who work in those critical sectors, saw many of those skilled workers in aged care and early childhood education leave, and they haven't come back. The funding cuts that they had to vocational education and training meant that many courses in regional areas were not run because they couldn't get enough students in those regional areas to fill very large class numbers. There's a litany of examples of how the previous government exacerbated the skills shortage that we have in our country.

But our government is acting to address the skills shortage that we have, and one of the key parts of that is creating this independent, transparent body which will be made up of many stakeholders, to help give us the data we need to address the skills crisis. The Albanese government is taking immediate action to address the urgent skills crisis.

The very first piece of legislation that was introduced into the parliament was to create Jobs and Skills Australia, an independent agency. It is critical that our government, the Australian community and economy and employers have independent, transparent data to help provide us with the advice that we need to address the current, and emerging and future, labour market and workforce skills and training needs, to improve employment opportunities. It's critical that we have accurate data. That will be one of key functions of Jobs and Skills Australia. It will work closely with state and territory governments, not against them.

JSA will work with industry, employers and unions. 'Unions' may be a dirty word to the opposition, but it's a word that we should not fear. Unions and their members know full well the skills challenges that we have, and it is quite often unions advocating in this place, articulately, on how we can solve those workforce issues.

One of the key reasons that educators are taking action today is that there's simply not enough of them. They are stressed; they are tired—the same as our aged-care workforce. They have ideas and solutions on how we can fix these skills gaps. And we, as a government, are keen to work with them, to ensure that we meet those gaps and those challenges.

The background of this bill is quite simple: it's the government's commitment to establish this new body and to work in partnership, which is different to the previous approach. It is critical that we work with our state and territory governments, who have a critical role to play—particularly in the delivery of TAFE. They have a role and a relationship with employers that we shouldn't be working against but working with.

I'll give just a few local examples of this skills shortage that we have, as we all know; we all hear it, from talking to local businesses. In February 2022, 17 per cent of businesses reported that they did not have enough employees and that recruitment was difficult. For higher skilled occupations, it was sitting at 67 per cent. In my electorate, I feel like that's the same. I haven't spoken to an employer in recent times who didn't say they were looking for staff. We are a large regional centre, but we still struggle to recruit, like many other regional areas. I've mentioned early childhood education and care, or ECEC. Just last week, I was at Goodstart Strathfieldsaye. They're currently at a 65 per cent occupancy. They could open more rooms but can't because they don't have the qualified staff to open those rooms. It's the same situation at Shine and Bright. In Maiden Gully there's a great new centre with fantastic facilities and amazing staff; there's just not enough of them.

The skills shortage in our care sector should not be underestimated. In aged care, I was alarmed to have the report that, at a few facilities, nurses were being asked to work a 24-hour shift. After finishing their 12-hour shift, they were being asked to stay on until the facility could find a replacement nurse because somebody had called in sick, so it had ended up being a 24-hour shift. That's unacceptable. It's unreasonable. But that is the skills crisis we're in.

It's not just the care sector in my electorate that's struggling with skills shortages. At Bendigo railway yards—a proud business that goes back many decades—we still manufacture and refurbish locomotives and rail in our electorate. They are looking for staff across the board. They have a good union agreement and good rates of pay, but, because we haven't invested enough in apprenticeships and young people, as our older filters and turners and boilermakers retire there aren't people with the adequate skills to replace them. They have a great apprenticeship ratio but they're always looking for more people to work. As we start to bring more of those jobs back onshore, we need to make sure we have the skilled workforce to do the job.

So we've got skills shortages in rail manufacturing; in fact, in all manufacturing. We have skills shortages in food manufacturing. DON KR is the biggest private employer in my electorate. 'The bako', as it's called in Castlemaine, will hire anyone who passes their entrance test. They are keen for a workforce. They always have a recruitment ad in the local paper. They've taken the step of engaging Pacific islands workers because they cannot fill their jobs locally. The jobs that they have range from engineers through to people in accounts and people on the factory floor.

Hospitality is one that's often raised. Smashed by the pandemic—the stop-start nature of what we did for health reasons—businesses are still opening only a few days a week or closing their doors at lunchtime because they can't get enough staff to fill shifts. Hospitality is a rewarding job but it's still a tough job. You're asked to work late nights and casual shifts. Not everyone has the skills required in hospitality, and we don't have enough people to fill hospitality jobs.

The vet shortage isn't something that happened overnight; it's been growing for a long time. Vets continue to be on the skills shortage list, and they have been for probably 20 years. It raises the question of why the previous government didn't address this one sooner, given that they claim they are the representatives of regional Australia. It's not just farmers and the live export industries that are raising concerns; it's also piggeries and processors. Any member with a regional electorate that has livestock or larger animals would know about the drastic shortage of vets that we have in our country and the need to train more locally.

What tended to be the practice under the previous government's model was for skills shortages to sit on the list forever. They would never come off. Once they went on, it was hard to get them off. We weren't investing properly in developing our own people to fill the gaps. Another example of that, of course, is GPs. A number of MPs have raised this issue. We have a chronic shortage of healthcare workers, in particular GPs, in our region. I acknowledge that it's complex. It's not as simple as just creating more university medical places. My local primary health network tell me that about 70 per cent of the university medical graduates currently going through our system stay in the state public hospital system and about 30 per cent go on to be GPs. At that rate we'll have very few doctors left for general practice in our region as our ageing workforce continue to retire.

It's a complex problem and an issue that an independent body like Jobs and Skills Australia could look at. With the previous government it was patchwork—a couple of places here, a little extension there, but no overall, comprehensive workforce strategy to help tackle the crisis we have not just with the number of GPs but in our rural health workforce. This agency will be able to work with other agencies to address the problems that we have across our country.

This bill, essentially, also lays the groundwork for future legislation that would establish a permanent Jobs and Skills Australia and include a full range of functions and structures and governance arrangements. It is just the beginning. It is part of our broader plan.

There are other key parts. Free TAFE places that were announced at the Jobs and Skills Summit will work in partnership with the state governments and their free TAFE commitments. The announcement of $1 billion in a co-funded national skills agreement that will deliver 180 free TAFE places in 2023 is a good start. It will give Australians the opportunity for a vocational education in the area where we need people to work. The Australian Skills Guarantee will train thousands of workers by ensuring that one in 10 federally funded major projects have an apprenticeship, traineeship or cadetship—critical to making sure that we have the boilermakers and tradespeople that we need in the future for these jobs. A further commitment guiding the principle will be an underpinned five-year national skills agreement from 2024—not just the makeshift stop-start of the previous government—making sure we have that five-year comprehensive plan.

Probably one of the most important commitments from our government has been that at least 70 per cent of Commonwealth VET funding will go towards public TAFE, helping to rebuild our much-loved public TAFE institutions whose primary role is not profits but the education of Australians. The TAFE Technology Fund will help improve facilities—workshops, laboratories, telehealth and simulators—across the country. We've had lots of good investment in Victoria at the TAFE level from the state Labor government. This fund will help fill the gaps.

This is just the beginning. I could go on about the importance of skills. It's an area which is close not just to my electorate but to many electorates. It's an area where there are lots of answers, but now it's time for action. We do need to get working if we're going to address the skills crisis that we're having in our country. The crisis is a handbrake on our productivity and hurts our recovery from the pandemic. I strongly encourage everybody to support this bill and to reach out to workers and give them hope, to reach out to businesses and give them hope, that we will work with them to solve these issues.

Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nurturing future jobs and skills is vital to Australia's prosperity, and we know it. This legislation establishes Jobs and Skills Australia as a statutory body within the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. It will provide advice and collect, analyse, share and publish data and other information on Australia's current and emerging labour market, training needs and priorities and the adequacy of the Australian system for providing vocational education and training.

In my electorate of Casey, I see thriving businesses, that collectively employ thousands of people, tradespeople, struggling to fill jobs. Whether it's Miglas glass or Mainstream Cabinets, from construction to hospitality or agriculture to electro-engineering, Casey has a wide spread of industries. I see the frustrations of businesses with skills shortages every day. In fact, I saw it when I visited a great local business, Hutch and Co., on Father's Day. The staff were working so hard, in a full restaurant, to give everyone a great experience. Half their restaurant was closed because they didn't have the staff to fill the demand.

Last week I visited Ranges TEC, a campus of Mount Evelyn Christian School, designed for hands-on study with year 10, 11 and 12 students, through VCAL, with the goal of achieving year 12 and a pathway to trade, TAFE or the workforce. I took along the Leader of the Opposition and the Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. During that visit, I ran into a young man named James. James and I played soccer together about two years ago at Lilydale Montrose United soccer club. I remember a time when I had to drive James to a game in the city and he was talking to me about starting at Ranges TEC. He was in year 10 and he was taking part in their taster program, which gives students the opportunity to try many different trades and understand what they like so they can specialise in year 11 and 12. It was extraordinary to see James two years later—how much his confidence had developed, his growth and development as a person and how he was enjoying learning to become a chef. It's a testament to the amazing work that Ranges TEC do. I know James was just one example of thousands of young people in Casey that they have helped.

There is an open enrolment at Ranges TEC. They draw students from every sector, including state, independent and Catholic schools; Steiner schools; and even homeschool. They usually have almost 100 students enrolled annually. Ranges TEC is an innovative model working to assist young people who struggle with the traditional school system. They create a pathway to employment for many young people and help them develop vital life skills.

On the same day, we visited Mainstream Cabinets, a family run business in Lilydale specialising in custom designed, high-quality kitchen, laundry, bathroom and office cabinetry. Matt showed us around and explained the challenges his business is facing at the moment. They included the increasing price of materials, but most worrying were the skills and worker shortages. He told us this was the biggest barrier to continued growth in his business.

The Labor Party inherited a booming skills and training sector from the coalition government. I passionately believe that if we invest in and support young people it is supporting not only them but also the wider community now and into the future, which is why I will always support legislation that helps our young people. We handed the Albanese government a skills and training system that was backed by record investments. There was real momentum in skills and training, thanks to the Liberals and the Nationals. We'd established a National Skills Commission to provide evidenced leadership on the skills we need for our workforce today and tomorrow. It invested a significant $13 billion in skills over the past two years alone.

While the new government's goal for better information, coordination and leadership of Australia's workforce and skills needs is important, it was already being provided by the National Skills Commission. You can see this with no funding being increased in the budget for this change. It's a name change. The NSC reformed and increased training incentives through the new Apprenticeships Incentive System, including introducing direct payments to apprentices to see them through their studies and into a job. Apprenticeship numbers were up to record levels. For the first time in our history, we hit over 220,000 Australians taking up a trade apprenticeship.

We support the jobs and skills sector fully and absolutely, but we remain sceptical of the Albanese government's plan for the new arrangements, given there is still no clarity on how the organisation will be structured or the responsibilities that Jobs and Skills Australia will hold. We did not know—and still do not know—the full scope of this agency, nor how it will operate, before Labor pressed ahead with establishing a new part of the bureaucracy, but I am sure that they had a media release they had to send out or a speech that the Prime Minister had to deliver.

The few announcements that Labor have made have been delayed to align with the much-hyped Jobs and Skills Summit, where the Prime Minister announced an additional 180,000 fee-free TAFE places for 2023. His much-vaunted training blitz is nothing more than marketing spin, with the vast majority of funded positions not new or additional at all. Reports in the Australian suggested that, of the 180,000 committed places, over 66 per cent already exist and will only be further subsidised. Just 45,000 will be new, and all of them were already announced as part of Labor's fee-free TAFE pre-election commitment. As I have begun to notice as a new MP, this government will always put politics and optics over the interests of Australians.

I must admit I'm also worried about the signals coming out of the government when it comes to the role of unions in the JSA. What is also concerning is the Prime Minister's explicit statement that funding will go to public training providers only. This is particularly worrying for the industry-led training providers. We know private RTOs currently do 70-80 per cent of training across the VET sector. This could open up the possibility of unions dominating the JSA's direction just like they did at the jobs summit and turning it into an entity that backs public providers only. We need an even-handed approach to the entire skills sector so it provides choice to our next generation.

While we accept that this bill will pass, I will be keeping my eye on the details that, hopefully, will be released soon. We know just how vital jobs policy is for the strength of our economy, and I really hope this Labor government get it right for once. However, Labor's poor record on skills is not new by any means. I am quickly realising that Labor do not have a plan to address the skills shortages in Casey outside of spin and optics. That's why I'm committed to working hard to ensure that we have short-term and long-term solutions to these skills shortages. This will include working visa extensions across all of Casey, which I will continue to advocate for, and partnering with Yarra Ranges Council to implement a designated-area migration agreement to help our businesses address their skills shortages.

We can't wait around for Labor to get their act together. That is why I invited the shadow minister for immigration and citizenship to Casey last week to meet with industry groups, including Wine Yarra Valley and Agribusiness Yarra Valley, as well as to visit businesses such as Cherry Hill, a thriving agricultural and tourism business that is facing worker shortages right now, today. As they are looking to staff up for their busy summer, they don't have staff. They would normally get over 600 applications for a role. They received 120 to fill 200 places. So we must work on both short-term and long-term solutions.

We want this agency to succeed because if it hits its mark, Jobs and Skills Australia will play an important role in the skills system. There's been a lot of talk about skills from Labor over the past week, but, as any tradie will tell you, it's getting the job done that matters. That's the important part.

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

I am very pleased to be supporting the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill 2022, which tackles an area that is holding our economy back. It's holding back businesses in my electorate of Macquarie, in the Blue Mountains and in the Hawkesbury. Having a planned, thought-through, collaborative approach to jobs and skills and to how we make sure we're training people for the jobs of the present and future is crucial.

Before I go into the detail of it, I want to point out a theme that's been coming from those opposite. It's an ill-informed view that there have been no specific additional programs and funding attached to the policy and the legislation that we're doing. The member for Casey repeated this. I really urge the member for Casey not to take the talking points he's given but maybe do his own research so he can fact check.

One of the things that this agency is going to be tasked to do is to look at the future challenges that we have around a clean energy workforce. We have made an announcement that there will be $1.9 million of additional funding—you can shake your head as much as you like, Member for Casey—absolutely targeted by Jobs and Skills Australia to deepen the understanding of the workforce issues and provide foresight on what the future challenges are going to be. So I really encourage those opposite to check their facts before they stand up in this place and tell us what we have or haven't done.

What we're doing here is a game changer for employers and workers in my electorate and around the country. What is going to be different about it is that we're going to work collaboratively. I know that's a word not much understood on the other side. Had there been better collaboration, we may not have ended up with the urgency of this skills crisis that we currently face. In my roundtables in the lead-up to the Jobs and Skills Summit, every single employer talked about the challenges that they're facing in trying to find skilled people or even finding the training options to skill-up people. That's why on coming to government we have taken immediate action to do this. It was the very first piece of legislation we introduced. Here we are, only a couple of weeks into our parliamentary sittings, debating the detail of it now.

Jobs and Skills Australia will be an independent agency and it will be responsible for providing advice to government on our current, emerging and future labour market and workforce skills and the training needs that go with those skills. Here's where the collaboration comes in. It's working closely with state and territory governments, as well as industry, employers, unions and training providers, to ensure that there really is a shared understanding of what the key issues are. It's also tasked to look at the adequacy of the vocational educational system that we have in delivering those skills, making sure that training and job opportunities are available to all Australians, irrespective of their background.

We particularly noticed the gaps in a peri-urban community that I represent, where you can't study some of the things that are needed in our very community. Only just last year, a key course that goes to the heart of our equine community was removed from our TAFE system. You can no longer do basic safety training to work around horses. We have a racehorse industry. We have a dressage and equestrian industry. We have a polo sector. They all require people who are able to work very safely around these potentially lethal animals. We need to make sure that our vocational education system provides training in the places where the work is and where the workers are and complete that triangle.

This is the first of a two-stage legislative process. The second part of the legislation will require detailed consultation. We're committed to doing that, working across state and territory governments, industries, employers, unions and training providers, to make sure that we get those details right. This is a terrific start. This is just the start of our commitment to ensuring that there are the training pathways and the trained workers that are needed. That's the outcome that we're looking for.

There has been a lot of focus on the sorts of trades that this will support, such as clean energy trades and construction trades, and all the people we will need for them. I want to talk about another set of workers, and that is the arts workers that we need. There are the technicians that we need to work in our theatres with all those technical skills. Things don't just appear on stage without a whole lot of technical stuff happening behind the scenes, from lighting to sound, equipment and things like safely moving sets in, let alone the construction of those sets.

What I keep hearing as Special Envoy for the Arts, travelling around the country to regional areas to consult around our National Cultural Policy, is that the arts sector cannot get the workers it needs. Given how many of them were treated during COVID and how hard it was for them to receive any government assistance, they left the sector. They had to eat, and they left the sector. Now there are severe shortages particularly in regional areas, although I know those shortages exist in more urban areas as well. For jobs and skills, I want to be clear: we're talking about every sector where technical expertise and skills based expertise is needed. That is what our government's objective is—to make sure we can train people up who are workers in every one of those sectors.

There are many things we need to do to set right what has happened in the last nearly 10 years. There are a range of commitments we've made—things that will shape how people interact with us when they're doing government tenders or projects that come under Commonwealth funding and the way we work with the states in terms of determining TAFE places. All those things will matter. Let me run through a few of the things that build off the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill that is the first step along the way. We have our Australian Skills Guarantee, which is about training thousands of workers by making sure that one in 10 workers on major federally funded government projects is an apprentice, trainee or cadet. We're going to look at how to include digital skills in that; this is something that came out of the Jobs and Skills Summit. We're also looking at targets for women so we can see some shift in those more traditionally male dominated sectors.

Another key objective we have that we'll be working on is around our fee-free TAFE places. The Jobs and Skills Summit, following the national cabinet meeting immediately prior to that, made the announcement of over $1 billion of co-funded money for that national skills agreement. That will deliver 180,000 fee-free TAFE places next year. That's a really good start. It's particularly a good start when you think it's daunting for a lot of young people to even know what pathway they're going to take, and to be able to do it and know they're not carrying a huge debt right from the start can be a game changer.

On some of the other plans we have: one mentioned by those opposite, with a lack of understanding, is the assurance we have given that at least 70 per cent of Commonwealth vocational education training funding will be for the public TAFE sector. Yesterday was National TAFE Day. We should be celebrating what is delivered in the public sector to students by incredible teachers in the TAFE system. It is right and proper that 70 per cent of Commonwealth funding goes there. That doesn't mean there isn't really good quality training happening in the private sector. We need to make sure that what is delivered in both sectors is to the standard that people deserve. That means it should be at an exceptionally high standard. A key area is obviously going to be around clean energy, which is why we've made a commitment of an additional $1.9 million to really understand what the needs are there. We will have new energy apprenticeships to encourage Australians to train in the new energy jobs of the future. There will be a new energy skills program in terms of developing for future pathways.

Something that sometimes gets left out is the foundation skills; TAFE teachers talk to me about these. It's all very well to put someone in a fee-free TAFE training course, but if they lack the literacy or numeracy skills or the digital literacy you're setting them up for failure. One of the outcomes of the summit was that the Commonwealth will work to redesign the foundation skills program, so we can make sure it best serves adult learners as well as supports vocational education providers and employers. Without those skills, it's very hard to get through your course.

I want to finish by taking a couple of minutes to talk about an incredible local program that has been not just talking the talk but walking the walk in terms of getting young people into an apprenticeship or a training program, and that is the Inspiring the Future Australia program from the Schools Industry Partnership. I met with Adrian, Ian, Jennie and Vanessa last week in Springwood to find out how they had been working with students within the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury to inspire them to think about becoming apprentices. What they are really aware of is that you can't be what you can't see.

They have some fun ways of engaging with young people in schools. The one that they say has huge success is this: they get all the kids in the school and they get a bunch of employers who have quite diverse backgrounds, and they play a game called 'What's my line of work'. There might be eight people onstage; they've each got a number. The kids get to ask questions—they have to be yes/no questions. We've all played that sort of game. What that does is help the students to guess what occupations or industries the volunteers work in. It was held earlier this year at Springwood High School. I'm told the students' reactions were priceless when they uncovered what the professions were. The way they find out what the profession is is that the professional or worker goes off into the wings and comes back with props or some of their costume. It's a way of getting students to think really widely about all the different roles and all the different training courses they can do.

Here are some of the occupations they were exposed to by this 'What's my line of work' game. One volunteer was a welder. One was a youth worker. One was a plumber. One was a childcare worker. Another was a beekeeper. There was an author, a horticulturalist, an allied health business owner and a landscape apprentice. There was a pilot and a correctional services officer. There were a vast range of things. For me, that's one of the things we also really need to work hard on: engaging with our young people in their school environment and supporting our careers advisers and teachers to do that.

The Inspiring the Future Australia program, which, of course, is run on the smell of an oily rag, is doing an incredible job encouraging young people. This year alone, they've been at a number of schools. At Colo High School, a former student, Jim Balchin, went back to the school as an industry guest. What a delight to see someone from your school and see what they've become!

There's a lot that we can do. On this side, we have an absolute commitment to getting this right. This is how we move our economy forward. It's how we make the most of our human capital, our people—we give people an opportunity to really excel in an area of work that they're well suited to. I absolutely support this bill, and I encourage the House to give it its full support.

Debate adjourned.