Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Chifley for his question. Of course, Australians around the country know about the impact of skills shortages. Whether you are running a major project in the north-west of this country or trying to get a plumber or another tradesperson to attend to a small job at your home, the consequences of skills shortages are in your face.

This is a skills crisis that has built up over 12 long years and which the government is urgently addressing. We have made available 42,000 training places under the Productivity Places Program of the government, and these training places provide job seekers with qualifications from certificate II level to diploma level. So oversubscribed has this program been, so popular has it been, with people taking the places and commencing training—and, indeed, some have completed training and they are now in jobs—that I have recently announced an additional investment of $45.5 million for an additional 15,000 training places to be available to job seekers.

We are acting to address Australia’s skills crisis, and the skills crisis shows throughout Australian society. Indeed, it is somewhat bemusing to me that we have seen a bit of a skills crisis on display today in the House of Representatives. We have seen the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition morph into senior counsel and junior counsel. He is back in his spy catcher days; she is back in her days of defending CSR against claims by people who got mesothelioma in Wittenoom. And they think that that is leadership for the country—senior counsel and junior counsel! Well, it might make a difference if you were at the bar trying to earn money as a Queen’s Counsel, but what Australians actually want is leadership. So I would suggest to the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition they might want to think about those political skills—

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