Amanda Vanstone (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Mason for his question. Being a Queensland senator, of course, he maintains a strong interest in things that happen right across the state, not just in the city of Brisbane. This issue of the trade skills training visa is very relevant to rural electorates around Australia. It has two key purposes. The first is to provide skills to businesses that need particular skills that they cannot get in Australia and to communities that need those skills. So the first thing this visa does is bring people in that are happy to do the work that a community and a business needs done.

The second thing that is addressed by this visa is that in some rural or remote areas where an apprenticeship is made up partly of full-time, on-the-job training and partly of training in a course or training institution, classroom based learning, there may not be enough students for a course to be run. The consequence of not having enough students for a course to be run is that a young Australian cannot do the apprenticeship. So the government has introduced a trade skills training visa. In order to get this visa the employer would have to show that they could not get an appropriate Australian to do the job.

Why should we stand in the way of businesses and communities that need skills when there are not enough people locally to fill the course? Why should we not allow companies to have people who come in from overseas to do that course? We have a sponsor in Roma in Queensland on behalf of a number of employers that cannot fill all their apprenticeship positions. Golden West Employment Solutions’ application was approved late last year. I am told they currently employ 413 local trade apprentices. This is not a company that is seeking to undermine Australian employment. Quite the opposite; it is seeking to build Australian employment and to build Australian training. I am told there are 188 vacancies waiting to be filled.

No suitable Australian will miss out on an apprenticeship position because of an overseas apprentice as before they can fill the vacancy an approved regional certifying body, which might be a state or territory government agency or a local government body, has to in fact certify that no Australian apprentice can be found to fill that vacancy. We have a situation where no Australian apprentice can be found so either the business does not grow and the community does not get those services or we bring someone from overseas, and that is what we are doing. The regional certifying bodies can of course ask for evidence of that, and I am sure they will.

This is the point: this government is reforming the immigration system to make it something that brings in the people Australia needs. The opposition understand the need for overseas students in universities and yet they will not let that happen in the trades area. That shows how unprincipled their opposition is. If it is okay to bring in overseas students for universities, why is it not okay for kids who want to do trade training to do that in Australia? When you can answer that question, you will see how fickle and two-faced your particular position is.