House debates

Monday, 14 October 2019

Private Members' Business

Vocational Education and Training

6:17 pm

Photo of Lisa ChestersLisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was actually quite surprised that a government member moved this motion, considering the shocking record this government has on skills and on skills in vocational education and training in this country. For six years those opposite have been in government, and we've seen nothing but cuts and attacks, particularly on our TAFE sector. I want to pull out a couple of points from the motion that's been moved. They're celebrating the creation of 1.2 million jobs since they came to government. What jobs are they talking about? These great gig economy jobs—all the Uber drivers we now have, all the Airtasker jobs we now have? Are these the kinds of great employment prospects this government is talking about? They don't talk about some of the full-time jobs being created. Is that because they've finally realised the full-time jobs being created in states like Victoria and Queensland are the jobs created by those state Labor governments? That is something that is helping our national figures. In Victoria we've had a number of full-time jobs created by good government policy in that state. It is not the same in New South Wales and Tasmania, where those state governments are slashing funding to TAFE and skills.

This motion talks about the 140,000 young Australians who've secured jobs in a six-year period. Again, what jobs are those opposite talking about? They celebrate when somebody gets an Uber job or an Airtasker job—these insecure gig economy jobs which exploit young workers. Today, if you're a young worker, you are more likely to be ripped off, underemployed and face risk at work than you are to have a good experience. That is the reality of being a young worker today. Gone are the days where you could have a job for life. The reason young people end up working in five to 10 jobs in their first three years is that, quite often, the employer phoenixes and the person has to go and work for someone else. They don't get enough hours. They're ripped off; they're not paid properly. The fact that we have the term 'wage theft' on this government's watch, which is a trending hashtag, demonstrates how this government is failing our young people.

I also note in this motion that they're no longer talking about the PaTH program, the touted program where they encouraged young people to work as interns for $4 extra an hour, and where they did these really cushy deals with big employers around the country and said, 'Great news: this will help young people find a job.' But when they actually did the research and spoke to people who'd been part of PaTH, nine times out of 10 they found their own job. Quite often, Coles and the big chains didn't employ that young person directly; they employed them through a PaTH program, taking away the job of another young person.

They talk about how great the leadership of this government is for introducing the Joyce review. After six years of failure, they're celebrating that they had a review. I'm the deputy chair of the House Education and Employment Committee and I look forward to the briefing we're going to receive this week about whether the government is going to implement the recommendations and where to forward, because we're desperate to have a skills strategy in this country.

Time and time again we are hearing from employers that they cannot get the skilled workers that they need. On this government's watch we have a skills crisis because of their funding cuts to TAFE and vocational education, and the blockages and the barriers they've put in place, particularly when it comes to the regions. Time and time again we're seeing skills on the skills shortage list and workers coming in on visas for skills that have been on it for over a decade. Clearly, that is a policy failure of this government. They put a skill on the short-term skills visa list, yet they haven't trained enough workers to take it off the list; it's still on there. That's a failure and a demonstration of how this government has failed.

It's not just Labor and it's not just regional communities saying this. It's also the Australian Industry Group saying this: 75 per cent of businesses that they surveyed are struggling to find qualified workers—and that's one of their mates, not our mates, saying that they've failed. It's hypocrisy by this government. They think they can come in here and present an alternative universe, put together little speeches that they can show in their electorates and that people in their communities will believe them. You cannot change reality. We have a skills crisis in this country, and for six years the government have done nothing to reverse it. They've made it harder for young people in the regions. They've made it harder for people in business to employ the people they need. It is broken. Nothing in this motion suggests that the government's got any plan to fix it.

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