Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Like my colleague, I have been prompted to rise to speak because I have been listening to the addresses by members of the new Labor Party government on the other side. They have flushed me out of my office because what we have heard is all the old hacks get up and deliver nothing but a litany of misrepresentations on this important issue, on this economic squeeze that we know exists. Senator Carol Brown looks all quizzical and surprised, but she delivered the most set piece of all the speeches from the government side, putting in every second line ‘the former government’s legacy and the problem they have created’. She read it with disinterest, just delivering her lines as if being told to.

Let me say this to you, Senator Brown, for as long as you can possibly stay in the chamber: it is quite well recognised and denied by no-one that there is a skills shortage. There are different reasons for that. But let me also assure you, Senator Brown, and the previous speakers from the government, that the establishment of Skills Australia is not the panacea. It is not the solution. It is just another advisory body. It can join the other 43 committees, inquiries, commissions and conferences. You may as well just add: Skills Australia—an advisory body to the government. That is all it is. It is not a step forward at all. It is a statutory body to advise the government on an issue they ought to already know about. And by the way Senator George Campbell delivered his speech today he is very keen to get onto that statutory body to advise the government. He was oozing to get onto the body with his praise for Skills Australia. But, rest assured, your deliveries today would convince no-one in the industry, no-one with any understanding, that Skills Australia is a step forward in solving the greater problems we have before us. You showed little knowledge of and little interest in the bill. You just rushed in here simply to deliver a litany of falsehoods against the former government.

I should also add that I want to go back to the Hansard and look at one of Minister Carr’s—I find ‘Minister Carr’ hard to say—answers in question time today in regard to what I believe were false figures which he gave on the government’s new apprenticeships scheme. He will have to come in here and correct that particular error.

As I said, there is no denying that we have a shortage of skills in this country. It is well known. There are many different reasons for that. Some of them go as far back as the eighties and the poor decisions made then in regard to the abolition of the tech colleges. We know that the tech colleges were a success in delivering the supply of tradespeople to meet the demand. But they were abolished by the Labor government on the grounds of some sort of false snobbery, that everyone ought to be doing arts or something at university. They abolished the tech colleges. The eighties may seem a long time ago for a lot of people but that had a cascading effect throughout the nineties and right through to today. The abolition of the tech colleges without doubt pulled the rug out from under the training of future tradespeople. And to think a Labor government did it.

The second reason that we have this squeeze on skills is the economy—the two economies, I should say. When the Labor Party were last in government under the Hawke-Keating government, in particular during the period when Paul Keating was Prime Minister, there was a severe recession which cut into businesses. Businesses simply stopped taking on apprentices. I have the figures for that. Apprenticeships dropped right down in 1994 to 107,000—a record low. The obvious effect, if the economy is driven into the ground, as it was by the previous Labor government, is that naturally the number of apprenticeships will drop off. Again, that has an effect for years to come because it takes some four years, plus probably a year or two extra in experience and training, for a properly skilled apprentice to get up and running, to meet their productive potential. So the recession during the previous Labor government had a severe effect on the skills pool in this country.

When we came into government, we immediately introduced the New Apprenticeships program in acknowledgement of the pending skills shortage. When the coalition were in government, we had 12 years of economic growth. That is another factor that squeezes the skills pool. Of course it does. These are the reasons. There is a heavy demand for skilled workers in a growing economy. That seems to have escaped those on the other side. They simply want to make cheap political points. These are the economic facts. The previous government’s record in regard to apprenticeships ought to be held up. I will not hear from the other side that it was not a very proud record. When we came in, as I said, apprenticeships were down to 107,000. In leaving government, there were somewhere near 450,000 to 500,000 apprentices in training. That is an enormous leap—from 107,000 to 400,000-plus. That was the success of the New Apprenticeships scheme. That was based on increased payments to employers and increased incentives for young people to take up an apprenticeship.

Moreover, we introduced the tech colleges. I should say that this government will abolish the previous government’s technical colleges program. Again, that is going to have a serious long-term effect. Just as we are talking now about the effect of the abolition of the technical colleges in the eighties upon the skills shortage and all those wasted young people who could have had more productive lives by taking up an apprenticeship but were forced into some other educational stream which did not suit them, we will be talking in the future, in probably the next 10 or 15 years, about the abolition of the technical colleges that this government is going to undertake.

Labor have learnt nothing. They are going to commit the same serious error twice. So do not anybody say that this is a new Labor government. This is the same old Labor government, and the same old unionists are on the speakers list—Senator George Campbell, Senator Sterle and the like. They should know better and should be standing up for future workers, the tradespeople. They were probably the beneficiaries themselves of an apprenticeship or perhaps even a tech school of some sort. The point is that Labor have learnt nothing and they are about to make the same mistake. What is their answer today? It is Skills Australia—an advisory body.

Also, besides the New Apprenticeships scheme, the previous government acted to increase their skilled migration program to meet short-term shortages. It ought to be noted that this skills shortage is an international one. It is not unique to Australia. How many people know of Australian nurses who have been attracted to England by higher pay? This is an international problem. We are competing on the international stage to attract workers. Nevertheless, the previous government increased the skilled migration program to 100,000-plus, I believe, and it has been a successful program.

Further to that, the previous government introduced the skills voucher program, which was targeted towards older—if you want to call 25 and over older—unskilled workers to train themselves up. The current government are going to abolish it. The voucher scheme is probably one of the most efficient, targeted and necessary schemes for that age group of all the programs introduced, and the government are going to abolish it. What are they going to do instead? They are going to introduce an advisory body. So we have the 2020 conference, we have commissions—the health commissions are set up—we have inquiries into this and that, we have motherhood statements, spin statements and platitudes, and now we have a new statutory advisory body for an issue of concern that we all know about. It does not require another advisory body; it requires management.

Those on the other side have approached this whole debate in a sheer political manner. Those who have spoken do not even know what Skills Australia gets up to. They have been given their brief and have come in here—and their brief is not so much to talk about the bill; it is to knock the previous government. I see Senator Evans, the new Leader of the Government in the Senate, has walked in. When are they going to get down and govern? Are they just going to wait for all these reports and commissions and advisory bodies to come in one day before they actually govern? Get down and start governing, is my advice, and do more in this area than just set up an advisory body.