Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Brandis, if you want to keep interjecting, tell us what you spent. In your contribution to this debate, you can tell us what your government spent, because it pales into insignificance with our plans for an education revolution.

There are many reasons that this education revolution is needed. Research undertaken by the previous government last year showed that 44 per cent of Australian businesses were having trouble recruiting the people they needed. They were your figures, Senator Brandis. What we have in this country is a skills crisis. This government has made fixing it a national priority, and that does not mean just plugging the skills gaps we have today; it means building the skills we will need for tomorrow. That is in stark contrast to everything the previous government did. It was always about short-termism, always about blaming everybody else but never about a long-term vision of what this country needs. That is why this government has undertaken the education revolution. The people on the opposition benches should be applauding us for these initiatives, but instead we heard from Senator Mason a fabricated set of figures, which he then based a whole argument on, to try to undermine the massive commitment that this government is making to the future of our economy, our education system and our society.

This government has made massive new investments in every stage of the learning journey. At the heart of this initiative, it is essential that we overcome disadvantage and improve educational outcomes. We need a skilled workforce to fill the jobs of the future—white-collar, green-collar and blue-collar jobs—and that is a fact that the opposition apparently failed to recognise in their entire term of office.

Moreover, the government need to address the challenges of 12 years of climate change denial by the previous government. We need smart citizens to make climate change adaptation work on the ground and the education revolution will ensure that we have people with these skills to handle the new technologies climate change will summon forth, to hold down increasingly knowledge intensive jobs and to contribute creatively to the innovation process. (Time expired)