John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I remind the parliament and I remind the member for Jagajaga in particular of an interview on 8 August 2006—it is very contemporary. It was an interview with Michael Costa, who is a senior minister in the New South Wales government. The intro from the ABC presenter said:

After 11 years of Labor government, the Treasurer is happy to admit to other failures.

Michael Costa: We failed to keep our apprentice numbers up—partly that was due to, you know, the focus on the balance sheet, the need to look at cost-cutting strategies—and unfortunately, it seems that apprenticeships was an easy one.

In other words, what that does is implicate the states. The member for Jagajaga talks to me about the investment of this government in skills. Let me remind the member for Jagajaga that we now have 389,000 apprentices and trainees in training. That represents a 151 per cent increase since March 1996. We are providing 167,000 additional places between 2005 and 2008. By contrast, when the now Leader of the Opposition was the Minister for Employment, Education and Training in 1993 there were only 123,000 apprentices in training.

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