Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In my electorate of Lindsay, the pathways to education are creating bright, positive futures for our young people. It's all about ensuring that we're creating local jobs for local people; backing small business and emerging industries to create and sustain generations of local jobs; and thinking about the future, particularly in Western Sydney, with the development of the Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport. The construction of this airport will create many thousands of local jobs. We are looking at future jobs for our young people who are currently in school, particularly in science, technology, engineering and maths, and ensuring our kids are educated for those jobs of the future. This very much starts at school.

I want to ensure I'm working really hard, both in my community and also from a policy perspective, to make sure that the 300,000 people who currently commute out of Western Sydney every single day for a good job don't have to do that anymore. I did that commute into Sydney for over 10 years, and I know many people are still doing it today. I want to make sure that our young people in the future, particularly with the creation of Western Sydney airport, don't have to do that commute. I want to make sure we have a vibrant local economy and are backing our small businesses to create more jobs, because people in Western Sydney—including, I know, in my community of Lindsay—very much want to live, work and stay in the community that we all love. We don't want our kids to have to do that commute that we've all done for many years for a good job.

Our investment in skills, training and education is absolutely key to this. Many people in the jobs of the future will start getting their apprenticeships now, and there are over 2,000 apprenticeships right now in Lindsay. The additional identified skills shortage payment launched by the Morrison government last year will support up to 80,000 more apprenticeships across Australia over five years, and we want these apprentices to be supported along the way. I know I surely do in Lindsay. The Australian Apprenticeship Support Network is helping 270,000 Australian apprentices in training and their employers.

In my electorate of Lindsay, employers like Shane, who owns Emu Plains Automotive Repairs, are really keen to employ apprentices. Shane has recently taken on a young female apprentice. This particular young apprentice at Emu Plains Automotive Repairs has had her interest in mechanics unlocked, and she has strong potential for a career in mechanics in the future. This is because we are backing local small and medium-sized businesses so they can support apprentices. We're creating jobs and, importantly, changing lives.

As part of the Morrison government's considered and responsible approach, the Skills Expert Panel established last year will provide independent strategic expert advice on the implementation of the government's skill reform priorities. Our $10 million investment in the development of the Jobs and Education Data Infrastructure project will change the way we see the supply and demand of skills. Our targeted approach means that we can support the development of skills, apprenticeships and jobs where they are needed most, and we're implementing better processes and gathering better data and expert strategic advice so we can deliver more opportunities for Australians. We're making sure in Western Sydney, including my electorate of Lindsay, that we are at the front line of these opportunities. We are creating, as I said, more jobs in Western Sydney and unlocking our potential through the biggest infrastructure project that we have going on, a once-in-a-generation project: the airport. This is just one of the things that we are doing locally to back small businesses and to back our local people looking for jobs.

I'm really proud that a few weeks ago I hosted a jobs fair, Penrith Jobs Fair, with over 2,300 local jobseekers. Minister Cash came out to Penrith, and we connected with over 40 employers from across Western Sydney. One of the great things about this is that I met with a young man who's 18 and is looking for a job, and he's really interested in computer science, so we were able, at that jobs forum, to connect him with potential employers. That's what it's all about: seeing our young people having those opportunities, tapping their potential, seeing what their interest is and, most importantly, making sure that, whatever they choose to do, they have the opportunity to do that not by commuting out of the area for many years but by accessing a really good local job.

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