Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Skills and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Boothby for her question. It was great to be with her at Tonsley TAFE meeting with fee-free TAFE students pretty recently. Of all the things that we've learned through enduring a global pandemic, perhaps the most important was the need to be more self-reliant as a nation, to stand on our own two feet, and to build greater sovereign capability. The Albanese government understands that supporting a Future Made in Australia is essential to achieving that goal to rebuild our manufacturing sector. Those opposite have historically failed to support the manufacturing sector.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Skills and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was a very interesting interjection because who could forget the former Liberal-National government goading a car company to leave our shores? That's exactly what happened because of the efforts of the previous Liberal government. Of course, they've never supported the car industry and they actually said that governments shouldn't support the industry, which makes it rather bizarre that they want to tip hundreds of billions of dollars into a risky, expensive, state-owned nuclear reactor situation. Effectively, the opposition is saying that 'We couldn't support the car industry, but we can actually invest hundreds of billions of taxpayers' dollars into nuclear reactors.' Well, what a remarkable turnaround by those opposite. The fact is, we need to invest in areas of demand and we need to invest in the manufacturing sector. That's why we introduced fee-free TAFE. We've now had more than 400,000 Australians enrol in fee-free TAFE in areas such as the energy sector, the manufacturing sector, the IT sector and more. We need to ensure we match those skills—

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Skills and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We saw the previous government's last budget cut support for apprentices. We've actually turned that around and are now investing more money to support apprentices and employers in manufacturing, in the housing and construction sector, in energy, and in other sectors of the economy. To ensure that we're delivering the best possible skills, we are creating centres of excellence, bringing universities and TAFEs together and working with industry. We recently announced one in Western Australia, another in Canberra and there are many more to come.

We are investing in up-to-date equipment at our TAFE campuses and ensuring we increase the number of teachers and trainers we need to provide the skills pipeline for the energy sector and manufacturing sector. While those opposite say that fee-free TAFE is wasteful spending, while they still have no plan to supply skills to our economy, we'll get on with the job of supplying skills to make sure we have a Future Made in Australia.