Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Governance and Other Matters) Bill 2020, and I do so with the great pleasure that my good friend and colleague Senator Michaelia Cash is in front of me in the chamber, because no-one is a greater advocate for jobs—and, particularly, VET jobs—in this place than Minister Cash. I have been lucky enough to be out and about with Minister Cash on a few occasions over the past couple of months, and one of the key focuses of our visits together, particularly into regional WA, has been the needs of businesses in attracting and training high-quality VET graduates and apprentices. It's great to see, through this measure, the government again building on the strong commitment we have to making sure that our VET sector is as strong as possible.

Nobody doubts and nobody would argue—certainly not Minister Cash—that there are some major challenges ahead of the VET sector in the current circumstances. But the Australian government's commitment to a skilled economy—to boost our economic recovery—has never been stronger. In fact, it is one of the key ways in which we are going to be able to build our economy out of this pandemic induced economic downturn, one of the ways we will be growing our economy into the future and one of the ways we will be making sure as many Australians as possible—all those Australians who want a job—can get a job.

We as a government are contributing an additional $2 billion to the new $2½ billion JobTrainer package dedicated to reforming the vocational education and training sector and keeping apprentices in jobs. There will be $1 billion allocated to set up the JobTrainer fund, with 50 per cent to be funded by the states and territories in recognition of the economic benefits that flow to those state and territories from a strong job-training sector. This will mean more Australians will have access to free or low-cost training places, particularly in areas of need, and we certainly see that out and about in rural WA. A further $1½ billion will be allocated to expanding and extending the Supporting Apprentices and Trainees wage subsidy, which was first announced in March of this year. The package responds to the challenges of the labour market because, as I have said, of the COVID-19 pandemic and is the next step in the sector reform process outlined by the Prime Minister as part of the government's JobMaker agenda.

Skills reform and strengthening our VET sector is central to the government's JobMaker plan to support Australia's economic recovery and our future growth. An unprecedented number of Australians are without work—many for the first time in their lives—due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of this, around 250,000 students will leave school at the end of this year. In that environment, obviously, it will be difficult for many of those students or ex-students to find employment immediately, in which case the VET sector particularly will become an increasingly important source of training opportunities.

As I said, I have been out and about with Minister Cash over the last few months. I want to highlight a few of the opportunities that are out there in regional Western Australia in particular and also some of the challenges we do face. Most recently, I was at the Bunbury Jobs Fair with Minister Cash. Jobs fairs are an extraordinary opportunity, and, at that particular jobs fair, the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Chamber of Commerce and Industry came down to Bunbury. Kalgoorlie has a particular challenge at the moment. It has a significant number of employment opportunities available but not the people willing to relocate to Kalgoorlie to take them up. It faces a particular set of challenges. This is quite ironic at a time when we're seeing, unfortunately, the unemployment rate increasing. I give a shout-out to all those who can get to Kalgoorlie and have the skills required, although there's a lot of training available for upskilling into those jobs.

One of the great things Minister Cash and I heard at that job fair was that, as a result of the previous job fair in Kalgoorlie, a number of individuals have entered full-time employment. So we are seeing actions linking individuals with training and directly resulting in job outcomes for those individuals. That is a key driver of the future economic growth we all want and need to see for Australia to recover strongly from the pandemic. It also gives individuals hope and opportunities that were not necessarily there before. These job fairs are a great way of linking people not just with a job but with training and a job. That's one of the key things we need to keep reminding all the people out there who want a job and are looking for an opportunity.

The job fair program is certainly great. Obviously these are challenging times for large events like that to proceed. I know the minister's department put an extraordinary amount of effort into making sure that the event itself was COVID safe. There were a large number of participating exhibitors who had jobs or training on offer and also a large number of individuals keen to see what opportunities are out there and to talk about the potential work and training opportunities that are available. So even with the COVID-safe requirements that we are all currently living under we saw a large number of people turning out and learning about those opportunities and talking to businesses and training providers face-to-face.

We saw a large number of businesses. There were some Indigenous-owned cleaning businesses, for example. One business we met started up in the last couple of years and has gone from strength to strength. It has grown from two employees to 20 employees in the space of a couple of years. This is the kind of activity want to see in our economy. We want to see training available to enable people who are unskilled or who need to reskill to enter those growing job opportunities.

More recently I was at De Rosa's Highway Motors in Waroona in south-west WA. Nick and his team are one of the premier farm machinery dealers in the south-west of WA. They service dairy, sheep and beef farmers as well as orchardists in the district. Nick is a salt-of-the-earth character from the bush. He's really passionate about giving local youth a go. He wants local youth to take up the opportunities that are available in his hometown. This business has been there for the vast majority of my life—I'd hate to say how long it has been there. When we drove to our own farm in Pemberton we passed De Rosa's Highway Motors in Waroona on many hundreds, if not thousands, of occasions. They are an institution in that part of the world. As I said, Nick is dedicated to giving local kids a go in mechanical apprenticeships. One thing I hear constantly throughout regional Western Australia is the need for people to take up mechanical apprenticeships and to have an opportunity to do diesel mechanic training in the VET sector.

AFGRI, another large farm machinery dealership throughout the Wheatbelt of Western Australia, has a significant training program of its own. It has something like 25 ongoing apprenticeships in any given year. It trains a lot of people in the full knowledge that the skills are highly sought after. A lot of those young men and women will end up being poached by mining companies. That's the reality of the training they do, and they train more than they need on the basis that many of them will go elsewhere. That's great for those individuals. It's a great opportunity. Those kinds of businesses are putting that effort into local training because it means they can continue to grow their own businesses, it means they can give locals an opportunity to get some high-quality skills, and it gives those young people an opportunity to develop a base of skills that allow them to move, to seek opportunities elsewhere and to advance their own life prospects—by perhaps going to the mining industry for a few years before coming back to the Wheatbelt, or perhaps going to the mining industry permanently. There are some challenges, absolutely, but also some wonderful opportunities out there for young Australians and Australians who are seeking to retrain.

Finally, on the situation in WA, a couple of months ago, Minister Cash and I visited John Fitzhardinge at Dongara Marine—again, a wonderful success story in regional WA. This is a boat-building company that has been building boats in Western Australia since 1975. Situated in what is a tiny coastal community, Dongara, just south of Geraldton, it's a regional business that is absolutely punching well above its weight, taking on a wide range of projects for both the private sector and government clients. It's building, for example, six-metre tenders for ecotourism in the Abrolhos Islands region, rigid inflatable marine rescue vessels and the 20-metre Berkeley class pilot boats in service in the Fremantle Ports. This boat has been described by one Fremantle pilot as the Rolls-Royce of pilot boats. Dongara Marine are also involved in building the new Transperth catamaran, the MV Tricia, which plies the Swan River, just down from the CPO, if anyone is ever over in Western Australia—I know it's a bit hard these days for us all to move around. The Swan River Transperth 'cat ferries' are very well known to all Western Australians and are very much a feature of the city. The fact that that new vessel, the MV Tricia, was built just north of Perth in a small regional town is a great credit to Dongara Marine and to John and his business partners, who continue to support the opportunities for young local apprentices in that industry.

When we were up there, Minister Cash and I saw a number of young Australians who had recently arrived in apprenticeships or were just about to complete apprenticeships—again, across a range of fields, from boat building to diesel mechanics to electrical engineering. So the opportunities are out there, particularly in the regions, and this government is committed to doing everything it can to support those opportunities. It is a difficult time for those who do not have a job, but the key message from today is that the opportunities are out there. Maybe you have to think a little bit differently about what those opportunities may be for you, going forward, but when you see the number of people who go along to events like the jobs fairs in Kalgoorlie and in Bunbury you know that there are opportunities for training and for jobs. There are also many, many people out there seeking those opportunities. I think that is a very positive thing for the future.