Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Education changes lives. Like many in this place, I was the first in my family to go to university. It changed my life, and it changed the lives of my family. Increasingly, tertiary qualifications—TAFE or university—are required to get a job or to continue to get ahead in your career. Employers need skilled workers, industries need skilled workers, and certainly industries of the future will need skilled workers.

This government is committed to ensuring that top-quality, affordable education is available for all Australians and we're acting on it. Pay rises for early childhood education workers is part of building up a skilled workforce in early childhood education to make it a career of choice, which supports the development of skills of our youngest Australians. We have millions on the table to fund public education at primary and high school levels. We have changed the way HECS debts are calculated so that indexing never again rises more than the wage price index and backdated it, reversing last year's increases, and the massively oversubscribed fee-free TAFE has enabled Australians to access training in areas most at need: early childhood education, IT and, of course, trades.

We have announced that a re-elected Albanese Labor government will cut 20 per cent off every HECS debt and make fee-free TAFE permanent, because we are backing a future made in Australia and we're backing Australians.