Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Skills) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise on this motion and I'm pleased that the member for Braddon has raised the issues that young people are facing in gaining employment. I do find it rather interesting, however, that the member for Braddon would paint such a rosy picture of the employment and vocational education systems that this government has left young people to navigate.

Young people have been clear with what they need. They need a skills training sector that is properly funded, properly resourced, and has educators who are properly trained and able to skill these kids up as a pathway to meaningful employment. This government hasn't delivered on a single element of those requests. Day after day, I hear of young people who are doing their best. They're trying to skill up and they're trying to get a job, but they're up against a system which is actively pushing them away. They're up against funding cuts and a government that is actually hostile towards vocational education and, by extension, a government that is dismantling the already limited pathways for young people to gain employment.

This government is not adequately tackling youth unemployment. The latest statistics from the ABS showed that we have a youth unemployment rate of 11.8 per cent. That's 295,000 young people who are actively searching for work but are coming up short. Interestingly, I've been meeting with employers in my electorate and around Victoria who are crying out for workers, yet they can't seem to find anyone skilled enough and are willing to take up positions. This isn't because nobody wants these jobs. This is symptomatic of a skills shortage crisis gripping Australia and, particularly, our young people. Maybe—and I'm just speculating here—young people aren't gaining the skills needed to take up these jobs because this government has cut $3.6 billion from vocational education. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that this $525 million Skills Package that the member for Braddon speaks of includes only $54.5 million of new funding. Maybe it has something to do with the continued funding cuts, the closure of TAFE campuses around Australia or the government's refusal to listen to the sector, to young people and to educators.

The member for Braddon mentioned the government's reform of the vocational education system. What reform is he speaking of? I'm sure the TAFE educators I've been meeting with would be shocked to hear of the reforms the government has implemented in the VET system. Perhaps the reform the member speaks of is their recent announcement—and this really is an innovative measure—that they've hired Scott Cam. Scott Cam has been snapped up by the government to promote trades to Australia's young people. Don't get me wrong: I'm sure he is a good bloke, and I take no offence at the promotion of trades. Young people should be taking up trades, and we should be promoting secure, decent jobs in trades. I do, however, find it shocking that the government is paying a national careers ambassador while they cut $3.6 billion from the sector; while they see fit to cut from VET and training, to cut from group training, to cut TAFE and to put educators out of work; and when their policies have caused the number of apprentices and trainees to fall by 150,000 and have let apprentices in this country be more likely to drop out than finish their apprenticeship. Even when all of this is true, when all of this is happening right around them, the government's solution to the skills shortages and youth unemployment we're seeing across this country is to hire a celebrity.

I will say at least this announcement provided some comic relief from the reality of this government's plan for employment and skills training in Australia, because the situation we are currently faced with is an indictment of this government. We are simultaneously experiencing a crisis of youth unemployment and a crisis of skills shortages. One of these is bad enough to be faced with but both of them at the same time is hard to imagine. But here we are confronted with both.

While businesses are struggling to fill the skilled positions they have on offer, we have young people desperate for work who can't fill those positions because they haven't been given the chance to gain the skills that the roles require. And, even though this is the case—and it's plainly obvious that it is—the government refuses to properly fund the sector. It refuses to give it the proper reform that it so desperately needs. Instead, it wheels out members, like the good member for Braddon, week after week to reannounce funding which already exists, to slap a new label on it and to take a whole lot of praise. I intend to give them all the praise they deserve, and that's not much. They might rise to spin their tales and their dreams of an economy and a government who are putting people into work, but I will continue to remind them of the crisis in youth unemployment and the crisis in skills shortages.

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