Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Payne), the Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business (Senator Cash) and the Minister for Youth and Sport (Senator Colbeck) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

Can I just begin by saying what another disappointing question time it was. We couldn't get clear answers from those on the other side whatsoever. Australia's in the midst of a skills crisis brought about by the Liberal government's $3 billion in cuts to TAFE and training, and what we get from the other side is a little lecture about a lecture. I don't think the speaking notes were leaked today, but I'm presuming that was in the speaking notes because I noticed a couple of ministers on that side used the same line about how they won't be lectured to. Well, let me tell you this: our asking questions about skills and apprenticeships and traineeships is not lecturing; it's asking questions. And, if we ask questions, we should get an answer.

As a Tasmanian, I know that the Morrison government's cuts to TAFE and training have hit Tasmania particularly hard. Premier Will Hodgman and Treasurer Peter Gutwein are crowing about a so-called golden age in Tasmania, but I can tell you that few Tasmanians share their optimism. We've lost 1,190 apprentices and trainees since the Liberals came to government federally. That's a drop of 12.5 per cent. But the minister failed to highlight this in her answers yesterday, and today she once again dodged the question when she was asked why she didn't answer that or put that in her answers yesterday. So the government is pretty good at dodging questions but not very good at giving answers. There is a difference, and the people of Tasmania, in particular, deserve to know why there's been such a reduction in trainees and apprentices.

We know that the skills shortage is particularly acute in Tasmania. Tasmania's lost 5,600 full-time jobs over the past 12 months. The trouble for Tasmanians is that we're faced with Liberal governments at both the state level and the federal level, and neither of them believe in TAFE, and they never have. Youth unemployment is 14.3 per cent in Tasmania, and it's harder for young people to get work in Tasmania than in any other state—

Senator Duniam interjecting—

and I must be hitting the right note here because Senator Duniam's trying to interject. It's either that or he's talking to himself. I think he's actually trying to interject. Senator Duniam, you've been here a while now. You know my line on that. I've worked with three-year-olds. I worked with three-year-olds for 12 years.

Senator Duniam interjecting—

You can interject all you want, I still don't hear, to be honest. Just this week, just now as we do this, in Tasmania, Premier Hodgman will not commit to not cutting the Launceston CBD campus of TAFE, which is under threat of closure. Even today, Premier Hodgman would not respond to that. He would not rule out the closures. It's fairly strange, I think, that Senator Hodgman will back a proposal to move the university in Launceston but he won't come out and say he won't cut the TAFE out of Launceston. I don't know where, really, he gets his advice from. I'm saying he really needs to look at what he's doing. To be honest, I'd be interested to find out what plans he's got for the building in Launceston that he's planning to move TAFE out of. Under Will Hodgman's government, TasTAFE has been plagued by course cancellations and delays, chronic staff shortages and inadequate infrastructure.

I'll say this again and again: Tasmania has lost 5,600 full-time jobs in the past year and has a youth unemployment rate that is so much higher than anywhere else. Given these appalling statistics, northern Tasmania needs a strong investment in infrastructure for TAFE, including maintaining that city campus. Instead of postponing and underresourcing trades and traineeships, both the state and federal governments must commit to complete courses in TAFE, in Tasmania, for the benefit of Tasmanians.

Let's quickly look at what's happening with Tasmanian women, who are not taking up apprenticeships or traineeships. Data shows there were 3,345 females in training in 2014 and, as of September 2018, there were 2,600 apprentices and trainees. So, no matter how you guys on that side want to spin it, that's a pretty big loss. This government, at both the state and federal level, in regard to TAFE, in regard to apprenticeships, in regard to traineeships, has completely dropped the ball. You're leaving Tasmanians unskilled and you're leaving them unable to get work. And that is simply not acceptable.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is extremely hypocritical for the Labor Party to be criticising the Liberal Party and the LNP about youth jobs. In my home state of Queensland, the Queensland state Labor government has shut down three agricultural colleges, in Dalby, Emerald and Hinchinbrook. Shame! What better way to create jobs for the youth and to look after the environment—and they've done this in the middle of one of the worst droughts in the last century. Dalby's on its knees; Emerald's on its knees. And what do you do? You shut down agricultural colleges. You've got the hide to come in here and criticise the Liberal government for investing $3 billion in the VET sector. Compare that to what federal Labor did in 2012-13. They took away 85,000 apprenticeships. We won't be taking any lectures on skills from Labor, after spending the past six years fixing the mess that they've left behind in our VET sector.

The greatest fall in apprenticeship numbers on record occurred in 2012-13 when the number of apprenticeships and trainee commencements fell by 85,000 places in a single year. Senator Wong, the member for Sydney, the member for McMahon and the Leader of the Opposition were sitting around the cabinet table at that time and did nothing. The member for Rankin—Jimmy—was chief of staff to the Treasurer and did nothing. In over just two years, all the same faces opposite gutted over $1.2 billion from employer incentives to take on apprenticeships. Nine times in two years the Labor Party wielded the knife against apprenticeship incentives. Every time they needed a cut, they went straight for apprenticeships.

This is the consequence of a Labor government that could not control its spending. When the Leader of the Opposition was Deputy Prime Minister, he, along with Senator Wong as finance minister and Mr Bowen as Treasurer, cut over $240 million out of apprenticeship incentives in a single year. How much noise did the member for Cooper make at the time, while leading the ACTU? None. But this is just the beginning of the mess that Labor left behind, the mess that has taken us six years to fix.

Of all the damage that the Labor Party did to the vocational education sector, nothing did more damage than their VET FEE-HELP changes. And wasn't that a debacle! This program saw thousands of students exploited by unscrupulous providers as a direct result of Labor's poorly designed reforms to this program. Since 2016, over 37,000 students have had VET FEE-HELP debts re-credited by the Commonwealth. That's right; we've been the ones to bail out our youth here. We are the ones looking after the youth after they were thrown under a bus by Labor. No government, in good conscience, could allow this behaviour to flourish. But the Labor Party let it happen.

Repairing this disastrous program has been an ongoing agenda item across all three terms of this government. The total cost to date of repairing this unconscionable program is just under $250 million. And fixing this problem is a cost to the taxpayer. However, this government is committed to ensuring Australians have the right skills for the workforce of today and the future. This financial year, we are investing over $3 billion in VET. That includes $1.5 billion to be given to the states and territories every year through the National Agreement for Skills and Workforce Development specific-purpose payments. Despite that, despite Queensland receiving generous amounts of money from the federal government, they still can't keep those agricultural colleges open. They always talk about the environment. You made a big song and dance today about jobs for youth. Where were you when the agricultural colleges were being closed down? Nowhere. You didn't care.

The federal government is putting $1.1 billion to fund the government's own skills programs, including employer incentives and support for Australian apprenticeships. The government's skills packages are contributing to an increase in Commonwealth funding to VET over the forward estimates. Over the period from 2018 to 2022, funding from the Commonwealth to the states remained stable at around $1.7 billion a year. Funding for the Commonwealth's own programs is expected to increase each year over the budget forward estimates to over $1.3 billion by 2022-23. We have commenced work to establish a new skills— (Time expired)

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In question time today, with Senator Colbeck's answers to questions, the plight of Australia's young people was well and truly revealed. Australia currently has a very high rate of youth unemployment, yet all the government can do is point to programs that are demonstrably failing. Take, for example, the question that Senator Smith asked this afternoon in relation to the rate of youth unemployment. We have a growing rate of youth unemployment in many places around the nation. The government claims they have injected 100,000 new jobs for young people into the system over the last 12 months. Well, the distressing fact is that there are 260,000 young Australians who are unemployed. Of course, in that period, people have moved in and out of the labour market. With 260,000 young people unemployed and more than 600,000 unemployed, those 100,000 jobs will in no way address that issue, particularly as young people age and a new generation of young people move out of their school years. There is a structural problem here that is growing, and it is deeply connected to other trends in the economy.

What happens when youth unemployment rises? It is very much interlinked with wage stagnation in Australia. As the Grattan Institute report quoted in these questions reveals:

Slower wage growth particularly hurts young people. Unlike older people, they are less likely to have other sources of income … and so rely more on wages.

People who enter the workforce at a time of low wage growth are particularly hurt because they miss out on the stronger wage progress people normally make in their first decade in the workforce.

This government has been giving excuses and twiddling its thumbs on the question of wage growth in Australia, frankly, for years now. You'll point out that you've created more jobs and that the economy is continuing to grow, but you absolutely do not deal with the economic fundamentals in question—that is, that people's take-home household income is declining and wage growth has declined—and you have no strategy for addressing these.

Indeed, in the very PaTH program that you have been lauding in your answers and that we've critiqued in our questions, you can see that only 30 per cent of participants have been offered a job at the end of their internship. That is a disgraceful set of figures and shows that this program really isn't working. In this case what's likely to be happening is that employers are relying on the wage subsidy in order to justify taking on these placements. I can see a role for wage subsidies, but decent and reliable employment has to be available to young people and all Australians so they can meet their cost-of-living needs. But what we see in Australia are a growing number of young people who are in economic distress and cannot meet their basic cost of living. The very same report, the Grattan Institute's Generation gap: ensuring a fair go for younger Australians, talked about pretty basic issues like food security, about the number of young people who don't have enough income to feed themselves. These issues are intrinsically interlinked. (Time expired)

Amanda Stoker (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to 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—

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

85,000?

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

85,000, Senator Scarr, in a single year. Senator Wong and the member for McMahon were members of cabinet at the time. In that very same single year they cut over $240 million out of apprenticeships. And did we hear them bleating and carrying on as they have been today? No. It's one standard for them and a different standard for everybody else. That's the kind of two-faced hypocrisy that we, as Australian people, have simply had enough of.

I could go on for an awfully long time about the damage they did to that sector. The changes they made to VET FEE-HELP saw thousands of students being exploited by unscrupulous providers, and they were a direct result of the poor governance that existed in Labor's poorly designed reforms to that program. Those reforms have led, since 2016, to the Commonwealth having to re-credit VET FEE-HELP loans to 37,000 students, so egregious was their exploitation. These were vulnerable students, systematically exploited while dodgy providers, who flourished under the no-rules environment that the Labor Party had in place, pocketed the lot. No sensible, responsible government could possibly allow that to flourish, yet that's exactly what they did.

So we have reformed that program, and we are continuing to drive improvement in that sector. Since we started making changes in that area in 2014-15, over $1.8 billion has been saved each and every year. That's what good governance will do for you. That is what an approach that cares about outcomes for people who are seeking work will do. With about 300,000 additional jobs created by the private sector in the year 2018-19, we have seen employment grow by 2.6 per cent. That might not sound like an enormous number, but it's well above the 1½ per cent growth forecast that was in the budget, and it is accompanied by a whole range of economic indicators that stand out as leading the way while the rest of the world is struggling with difficult economic headwinds—across the economy. We'd love for wages to be enormous, but here's the key indicator: they increased in excess of inflation. Inflation was steady at 1.6 per cent, and wages increased by 2.3 per cent. In circumstances in which there is a small increase in wages, Australians are, in real-wage terms, getting ahead.

The way we need to look at maximising opportunity for Australians is to ensure that their cost of living doesn't get too high, that they can afford the cost of all the things around them and that there are lots and lots of job opportunities from which to choose. That is exactly what the coalition government is providing. We are doing it day in, day out. Whether by boosting apprenticeships by 85,000 or by subsidising and incentivising key skills shortage areas—the PaTH program—we are bringing opportunity to Australians who need it most. (Time expired)

Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What we've heard this afternoon from this government is that it is a government that has no plan for good jobs, has no plan to support the TAFE training system, has no plan to get wages moving in this country and has no plan to create opportunity for young Australians to get into work. When asked how the government has managed to preside over a skills shortage and wage stagnation at the same time—which is quite the achievement—Senator Payne said that the government is 'absolutely committed' on skills shortages. The government says that the government is investing in vocational training. And when asked about chronically low wage growth in this country under this government, Minister Payne said that there's no problem, that everything's okay. She says Australians are looking forward to a future of opportunity. Well, yes they are—but not while this government is in office, because the reality of their record is not quite as rosy as the government would have you believe.

It truly seems that they think that if they can say, 'Everything is fine,' enough times then it might just become true, but the truth is that this is a government with absolutely no plan. They have no plan to deal with the significant issues facing our economy and facing our country. Their lack of leadership is really hurting Australians today, because wage growth is at record lows. In some sectors, it's not just that people's wages aren't going up; they are actually going backwards in real terms. With the most recent wage growth figures at just 2.3 per cent, this government's record on wages growth is absolutely abysmal.

Economists, and just about every other person in the country, are screaming out that wage growth needs boosting. We need a plan to get wages moving in this country, and we need that both to kickstart our flagging, faltering economy and to help Australian families that are struggling with the rising cost of living. Everything is going up in this country at the moment, except for people's wages, and families are struggling, but you wouldn't know that from the answers that the government gave us today.

It's obvious that this government just doesn't care. It didn't care when it stood by and allowed over 700,000 retail, fast-food, hospitality and pharmacy workers to have their penalty rates cut—penalty rate cuts that have not delivered a single new job in this country, despite the government's claims, and penalty rate cuts that cut the pay of some of Australia's lowest paid workers.

Let's think about the answers that Senator Cash gave to questions about apprenticeships today. When asked what's happening to apprenticeships, which have dropped by 12 per cent in Tasmania under this government, Senator Cash took the opportunity to talk about Senator Watt and to gloat again about the election result. She showed absolutely no care for apprentices in Tasmania or around the country today.

What can I say about Senator Colbeck's attempted answers to our questions? When asked about youth unemployment blowing out to almost 12 per cent, and hundreds of thousands of young Australian workers who are underemployed, the aptly named minister for youth, Senator Colbeck, said, 'Everything's under control,' but everything is not under control with this government. In fact, this government has cut $3 billion from our TAFE and training sector. Today, we have 150,000 fewer apprentices and trainees than when the Liberals were elected in 2013. They have cut and cut and cut. Today in Australia there are around 260,000 unemployed young people and many, many more thousands of underemployed young people. It's time that this government got a plan to get wages moving and support young workers today.

Question agreed to.