Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (Senator Vanstone) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

We heard it all today. We are experiencing the worst skills shortage in Australia since just after the Second World War in the context of a minerals boom and a demand for our goods in South-East Asia, in particular. We are seeing problems with the traditional skills. We are seeing problems with transport skills. We are seeing problems in the road construction area. We are seeing problems in manufacturing, even though it is not going all that well, because of the draw of skills away from manufacturing by some of the resource industries. And this government is still living under the delusion that somehow its last 10 years of government have had no impact on that catastrophe of skills shortage in Australia.

I remind the government, including Minister Vanstone, that in 1996 and 1997 I and other Labor senators were asking questions of the government about what they were doing to improve the engagement of apprentices in traditional trades. Do you know what the government’s response was? In a move which was designed for propaganda rather than nation building purposes, they established a program called the New Apprenticeships program, so that when young people were engaged in traineeship programs in hospitality, in retail or in clerical occupations, they would be able to say that these were new apprenticeships—so they would be able to pretend to the public that they were actually putting people into new apprenticeships in those traditional trades areas.

We are seeing the fruits of that deception now. We are seeing, across this country, massive complaints about the problems that we are experiencing with a lack of skilled trades. We have had the South Australian Freight Council, for example, saying:

A critical shortage of skilled workers over the next decade in Australia’s $60 billion a year transport and logistics industry could threaten the nation’s future economic growth.

That is an industry that is responsible for 3.4 per cent of our gross domestic product. We should also be aware that Australian road freight is predicted to double between now and 2020. Yet that industry now is facing dramatic skills shortages.

What we have heard today on top of all that is that the government has decided not to do something practical to get beyond the problem that we are in but to rebadge the New Apprenticeships scheme as the Australian apprenticeships scheme and at the same time cut funding of the incentives program from that New Apprenticeships scheme by $41½ million in net terms. The minister was not prepared to address that in her answer to the Senate in question time today because it is scandalous that, at this time of crisis when we are facing skills shortages that we have not seen since the end of the Second World War, all this government can think of is playing politics: changing the name of the scheme, trimming some money from employer incentives, perhaps so that they can put them in just before the next election and then pretend what a good job they are doing, and at the same time suggesting that whatever problems we have are due to a government that was in power over a decade ago and that they are not due to anything this government has done or to the fact that the funding for trade training and skills training was cut by this government in 1997 and 1998.

Trying to pretend that that did not happen and saying that this is a problem presented to the Australian economy by the previous Labor government is just a fabrication. This government is the author of this problem. It has been in power for near on a decade. It has done nothing substantial to address this problem, and the Australian economy is now going to pay the price. What is its solution? ‘We will bring in workers from China or the Philippines or South-East Asia generally—anywhere we can get them. But train Australians? No, thanks. That would cost us money and we can better things like fund our political advertising program to try to get across the line at the next election.’ I can tell you: that is going to be a pretty difficult ask for this government, and we will be doing all in our power to make sure the Australian people know that this is the government that is responsible for the crisis that is dragging the Australian economy down.