Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Cunningham asks what happened to them. They got cut. They have been reduced. So, we are trying to plan for the jobs of the future now, but the very body that would work with industry to do that is gone. This makes no sense whatsoever. What start-ups want government to do is not to throw heaps of cash around but just to focus on the things government can do well—building skills, not cutting money from secondary and primary schooling, as we are seeing now, and not bringing in $100,000 university degrees and pricing people out of education, and not, for example, removing coding from the national curriculum and then having a Prime Minster not only defend that position but seeming to suggest that if you included it you were encouraging child labour in this country. This is backward thinking that will set us back.

We heard the previous speaker indicate that we should be working together. He is absolutely right. We should be working together. We should be working together to find ways to smarten people up and give them the skills they need, to make sure the money is there to support their investments. They should not chide us on a smart investment fund, as we had one parliamentary secretary do today, but find more ways to find the money to support ideas for talented people who need the education to support them. That is something that should be a national mission embraced by both sides of this parliament. It should not be something that is derided from one end to the other. (Time expired)

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