Amanda Stoker (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It really is quite rich that we have had both a question time and a take note period in which those opposite have carried on about this government's performance on the youth employment and skills front when their record is something about which they should hang their heads in shame. Let's get a few facts on the record, because, quite frankly, they speak for themselves. We heard an awful lot about apprenticeships in the course of question time today. They carried on as though apprenticeships were high under Labor and have plummeted under the coalition, and nothing could be further from the truth. The greatest fall in apprentice numbers on record—not just now, not last week, not last year; the entire time we've been keeping track of these things—occurred under the former Labor government in 2012-13, when the number of apprenticeships and trainee commencements fell by 85,000—