Linda White (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I rise to make a contribution on the ministerial statement, tabled just now, from Minister O'Connor on the government's work on revitalising national planning in vocational education and training.

Before coming to this place, I had a career in the union movement; I have spent my life representing and defending Australian workers. This means that I have seen what good, skilled jobs mean to people. It also means that I have seen how government policies, some good and some not so good, impact on workers and materially change people's daily lives and prospects. The establishment of Jobs and Skills Australia and the government's fee-free TAFE program are two of those good policies which clearly make a difference to the lives of Australians.

In the first half of 2023, more than 214,300 Australians enrolled in fee-free courses. That's about the same amount of people as the population of Hobart. That's worth saying again: in just six months, more than 200,000 Australians have chosen to enrol in vocational education. Encouragingly, the data shows that the policy is targeting the people who need and want to upskill the most. Of the 214,300 enrolments, 60 per cent are women and 23 per cent are jobseekers. And there are 15,269 students who live with a disability and 6,845 students who are of First Nations origin. That is targeted and effective public policy in action.

In a labour market where the work of women in feminised industries is consistently undervalued, the fact that more women are training and retraining to acquire new skills and to access well-paid secure jobs is fantastic. That's nearly 130,000 Australian women who are moving up the pay ladder and using the fee-free TAFE model to invest in their abilities and in their futures, and they're earning higher wages as a result. There's also a link between vocational education and training and further higher education. People who start a course at TAFE are more likely to progress even further through the vocational and higher education systems.

There are certainly challenges in our labour market at the moment. After the COVID pandemic, certain parts of the Australian jobs market have struggled to recover to pre-pandemic levels. We've all heard about and experienced the impacts that labour shortages in essential services and frontline sectors have on prices and supply chains, and on Australians accessing the services they need, like child care, health care, cyberservices, nursing and in the construction area. We've heard that this problem is complex. I've seen the labour market develop and evolve over my career, and it's not just one thing that can change the way Australians work. I have always said that it's a complex ecosystem that needs broad reform and that it has to be looked at as a whole. Nevertheless, we're moving towards a service based economy and a more highly-skilled economy. Of course there will always be whole range of jobs that are necessary to make Australia work; we should support all sorts of jobs and all sorts of work. But it's true that we need more people to deliver health care, child care, hospitality services and trades, among other things. In short, we need people to do skilled work more than we used to.

This brings me back to Jobs and Skills Australia and fee-free TAFE. In the last six months, the most popular courses Australia-wide were: Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care, the Diploma of Nursing, Certificate IV in Accounting and Bookkeeping, Certificate III in Individual Support and Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. This list of enrolments again demonstrates that fee-free TAFE is working. It’s a policy designed to encourage Australians to meet the skills shortages and labour demands we are seeing in particular parts of the economy. Again, the data shows that the policy is working.

Lastly, I want to briefly talk about my experiences with fee-free TAFE out in the real world. We spend a lot of time in this place discussing issues and making contributions about the lives of Australians, so whenever I get the chance to see policies in action in real life, I grab it with both hands. A month or so ago I got the chance to visit Wodonga TAFE in the electorate of Indi and I saw firsthand how the fee-free TAFE mechanism is working there. Enrolments have increased across a whole range of vocational education courses there, particularly in the training of electricians and in construction management. Given the pressures on supply chains and the labour shortages in the construction industry, this sort of thing is positive to see. This is particularly important in our regions, where it is often the case that the problems of a city are compounded by distance and demand. This is the case in Wodonga, where social and affordable housing is harder to access because it's harder to build. It's a similar story for childcare deserts in our regions, where there are three children per childcare place. Labour shortages of childcare workers and early-childhood educators make it hard for families to balance the responsibilities of work and care. Fee-free TAFE and Jobs and Skills Australia seek to correct this mismatch between supply and demand by making it easier for Australians in the regions to acquire the skills their communities need and to stay in their communities to work.

The goal for Jobs and Skills Australia and the fee-free TAFE program was 180,000 enrolments this year. The program has exceeded that goal by more than 30,000 people. Clearly, people want to upskill and be part of our government's investment in Australia's skill base. They want to take the opportunity to build their wages and their communities. I am proud of the work of Jobs and Skills Australia and proud of the Australians who have taken up the opportunity to develop their skills, and I congratulate Minister O'Connor for this fantastic result.

Debate adjourned.