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

I thank the senator for the question. I have not seen the comments made by Professor Sloan but, in the limited context in which they have been repeated here, I think, frankly, everybody in this place would agree with them. This government does not look at immigration as being a skills fix. We look to the training of young Australians, and we certainly remember with some regret the time period of the previous government when the now Leader of the Opposition—who now says, through you, Mr President, ‘I’ll train Australians and I’ll train them now’ or ‘I’ll train them first’—was actually responsible for cutting the funding to the training of apprentices and trainees. That is, people wanting to do traditional trades and new apprenticeships had the spending on those matters cut by the now Leader of the Opposition. It is a problem for the Labor Party that they cannot do one thing in government and then in opposition say: ‘Trust us. We wouldn’t do that again.’

It was like interest rates, wasn’t it? Look what happened when the Australian public looked at the Labor party’s record on economic management, and the same will happen when the Australian public look at the Labor Party’s record on training. You cannot have 13 or 14 years in government during which you give the Australian people a recession which you say will be good for them—a recession we allegedly had to have—and then cut funding to apprenticeships and traineeships and later say: ‘Gee, if you re-elect me, I won’t do that again. Heavens no! I’ll pour money into the training system.’