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

I can, indeed, inform Senator Watt that there has, as statistics show, been a decline in relation to apprenticeship commencements that dates right back to changes that were made in 2012 in relation to apprenticeship incentives. Who was in government in 2012? It was the Gillard government who was in government in 2012. It ripped out a range of employer incentives for commencement of apprenticeships and employment of apprentices. The consequence of that is that, given it takes three or four years for an apprentice to be employed, there has absolutely been a time lag in seeing the full impact of those policies of those opposite that had a demonstrable effect in reducing the rates at which employers chose to take on new apprentices or new trainees.

The Turnbull government have worked to clean up a range of areas of dissatisfaction and mess created in vocational education policy by those opposite. The greatest example of course is the VET Student Loans scheme, which saw billions of taxpayer dollars wasted in a dodgy loans program established by the Labor Party which we have had to fix and eventually eliminate and completely replace with a new targeted and more effective regime. And of course, in last year's budget, we announced a commitment to ensure that, in future, investment and co-investment with the states in apprenticeships and traineeships is targeted at ensuring that Commonwealth dollars aren't just used as they have been as a substitute for state and territory investment but actually deliver additionality of investment to create further growth in apprenticeships and traineeships into the future.