Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a great day today for the young people in my electorate of Hasluck, and for those not so young, because the Albanese Labor government, under the excellent leadership of the Minister for Skills and Training, has announced the extension of fee-free TAFE, funding a further $400 million for the next two years, which will enable another 300,000 people to be able to access free TAFE in critical areas of work where we need people to be skilled-up and job-ready.

For context, there was a course at Midland TAFE in the electorate of Hasluck where they had seven people enrolled in an electronics and communications course. It is expensive. But those opposite, where the deputy opposition leader declares that the spending on TAFE is wasted spending, essentially cut the opportunity for people to be able to participate. They thought: 'No one's interested. No one wants to further their potential or further their career path.' We made it free, and within one term there were 85 enrolments in that course—85 from seven. So, people were invested in their future, to upskill and to retrain into the jobs of the future. We're making it free because we are concerned to make sure that people have more opportunity to keep what they earn and the money that they've saved in their back pocket. You can't do better than making training free.