Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment Participation) Share this | Hansard source

how absorbed the previous government was. There was no investment in training; there was just a ‘get them into any job at any cost’ mentality. In my portfolio, that blinkered approach created an employment system with the wrong emphasis, where training and education had little or no value. I refer the House to the words of the Age’s economics editor, who only on 5 February said: ‘The Howard government dropped the ball on skills training.’ Indeed it did. And as recently as two days ago the Daily Telegraph reported on a survey conducted by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research. It found that 80 per cent of large employers have had difficulty recruiting over the last 12 months. That is 80 per cent of large employers, up from 68 per cent in 2005.

The Rudd government is currently waging a war on inflation. We will continue to fight that war, something that was neglected by the previous government for more than a decade.

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