Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator O'Sullivan for his question and in particular I acknowledge the work he did prior to being a senator in relation to ensuring that Australians are upskilled, in particular in our home state of Western Australia.

The Morrison-Joyce government without a doubt is a job creating government. Since we were elected in 2013 over 1.7 million jobs have been created. For context, we actually had a population the size of South Australia move into work over the last nine years. That is a great thing for the Australian people. The unemployment level as we know now sits at 4.2 per cent. It is lower than when Labor was last in office. Of course, getting Australians into jobs is the focus of our policies when it comes to recovering from COVID-19.

Senator O'Sullivan, as you know, one of the focuses is investing in vocational education and training. Our investment in skills and training commenced when we were elected to office in 2013. It is now at record levels in Australia. In the past two years the coalition government has invested around $12 billion into the skills and training system, and this year alone we're expecting a record $7.1 billion investment. As we move towards the election, it's important to remind ourselves what Labor did to vocational education and training when they were last in office. If you recall, they totally destroyed the reputation of the VET sector. Colleagues, who can forget Labor's disastrous VET FEE-HELP system, signing students up to courses that didn't exist? It's now costing the Australian taxpayer $2 billion in recrediting.