Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am really pleased tonight to rise in the Senate and to speak about our government's policy to make fee-free TAFE permanent. Last week Matt Smith, candidate for Leichhardt, and I visited the TAFE Cairns and met some amazing students. Matt Smith and I met Terri, a student at TAFE Cairns who is studying nursing. Terri is part of a cohort of nurses set to graduate in the next few weeks and will be in the workforce by January in Cairns delivering regional nursing services. Terri is an incredible woman. Her classmates look up to her, she is a great student, and she has so much compassion and care for the Cairns community.

But, without the Albanese Labor government's fee-free TAFE, Terri wouldn't be there, and she wouldn't be becoming a nurse. Terri told us that her TAFE experiences have been amazing, and she put a call out to those wanting to go to TAFE to take a leap and chase their dreams. But today we found out that the Liberal and National parties, under Peter Dutton's leadership, are going to oppose the government's legislation that would make fee-free TAFE permanent. This means they're actively denying students like Terri and future students the opportunity to access affordable, high-quality training that can lead to secure, well-paid jobs, and they're denying industries, like the healthcare industry in places like Cairns, the opportunity to have skilled workers.

Australians have embraced fee-free TAFE with overwhelming support. Over half a million people have already accessed the life-changing opportunities that come with fee-free TAFE. They have accessed training in critical sectors that are vital to our community—sectors like health care, construction, early childhood education and, of course, nursing. This is the training that will equip them with the skills that our nation desperately needs to overcome the current skills shortage—the worst in 50 years and a legacy left by the previous Liberal-National government. But now, despite the success of fee-free TAFE, under Peter Dutton the Liberal and National parties are saying no to fee-free TAFE. They are saying to these wonderful TAFE students that they simply aren't worth the investment. They're saying to people like Terri that they should stay put in their current job and not retrain to become a nurse of the future. They want to scrap the very policies that are opening doors for Australians to build brighter futures and for us to have the skilled workforce that we need.

It is clear that there is a choice at the next election, and it is clear that, for Australians, the only solution to have fee-free TAFE is to vote for an Albanese Labor government. In Cairns, that means supporting Matt Smith, the Labor candidate for Leichhardt, because the local Liberal candidate will not be supporting fee-free TAFE at the election. The Labor government is committed to rebuilding the VET sector after the decade of neglect. This is a sector that has been starved of funding and left underresourced and undervalued by the Liberals. Our Labor government will ensure that fee-free TAFE becomes an enduring piece of the national vocational education and training system. We'll ensure that by 2027 we'll be funding 100,000 fee-free TAFE places every single year. Imagine 100,000 Terris out there training to be the next nurse, the next early childhood educator or the next construction worker. Places will be available to people across Australia, from all walks of life. We know that this is working. We know that one in three of these places is in regional Australia. We know that more women have taken up this opportunity. We know that we saw 180,000 fee-free TAFE places in 2023 and we will see 300,000 places over the next three years.

I'm really proud of the work that our government has done to establish fee-free TAFE to train up students like Terri and give them an opportunity to become a nurse. Terri's mum was a nurse, and that's why Terri has entered the profession through fee-free TAFE. I hope that we don't have a Peter Dutton government that would put a stop to fee-free TAFE and stop students like Terri becoming nurses in regional towns like Cairns, and the only way to stop that from happening is for an Albanese Labor government to make fee-free TAFE permanent. It's clear that there's a choice for people living in Cairns. If you want to keep students like Terri being trained to be the next healthcare professionals to service our families and our community then you need to support Matt Smith at the election, because that's how we'll get fee-free TAFE.