Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

We're teaching kids trades on equipment that's older than they are. Some of it was made during the Cold War. Floors are rusted through and roofs are falling in. Yet the coalition, the ones in government, are arguing over who is to blame. Great! It doesn't matter how much TAFE costs if the qualifications it offers aren't valued. I want TAFE valued, I want it honoured and I want it fixed. You are all arguing that it is the other guys who need to do something about it. Get real. Show some initiative. Just show some initiative. Make some good, solid decisions. Get in there and fix it. Instead of paying lip service, actually fix it.

Voters don't want to know who to blame for the collapse in the training and trades sector. They are not interested. They don't care. They just don't care about that. Voters want a trades and training sector that isn't collapsing, full-stop. Let's be honest: that is what is happening. Wall to wall, floor to ceiling, it is crumbling in front of our eyes, and yet the coalition in government are arguing about how many commissioners should sit on a board of an ineffective regulator. It's just another board sitting on top. It's just another one that will get nothing done. It's just to make it look like you are actually achieving something. That bothers me terribly. As soon as you can't get something right and make it happen, you put up a board. That is what you do. That is the normal Liberal way.

If you care about our trades, care enough to save them. Until then, spare us the speeches about how bad the other guys are. I won't waste a second arguing who is worst. I just want what's best, because I went to TAFE, like my mum and like my son, and I see what it did for my family and what it has done for the people in my part of town and my community and what that heart and soul meant when it was up and running and pumping at 110 per cent.

I've seen how much that meant to our community and how much was achieved for our kids, and all I see now is that it's got a boot on its neck and it's struggling. It is struggling to breathe, and we've got the time in the Senate to give it some breathing room, but instead we're spending hours debating who gets to be on the board of a regulator, getting overtime and no doubt paid an arm and a leg—to do what? Another regulator? Another board? To do what? To do the job that, apparently, ministers on that side are not able to do, because, if they were, they wouldn't be paying their mates to try to get the job done, which they don't either.

This is where parliament in this country has got to these days. A minister can't get the job done. They pay their mates to do a board; that's how it works. Quite frankly, you should be ashamed of yourselves. If that's what you're doing—and that's what you are doing—you should not be a minister in this country.