Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

More locations, more support services, more pre-screening, more mentoring—a lot of differences in what this government is providing to help more apprentices to the completion of their apprenticeship compared with what the previous government did. It is clear that those opposite still do not get it. They still do not get it, because the shadow minister, when I announced this tender, put out a statement that disparagingly criticised the fact that 'the new network is also expected to do additional tasks such as providing job matching, mentoring and support'. That is exactly what we want the new network to do. We want to take those tenderers away from having to do a lot of paperwork. We want to stop those employers from having to do a lot of paperwork around their apprenticeship and actually give them the time and the support to provide quality training and quality mentoring so that we get more Australians who start apprenticeships completing those apprenticeships and more qualified and skilled tradespeople available right around Australia.