Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Republic) Share this | Hansard source

I want to congratulate the member for Longman for moving this motion, because it gives us the opportunity to point out what a failure these government schemes—JobTrainer and JobMaker—have been, highlighted on no less than the front page of TheAustralian Financial Review today, where they looked at the JobMaker hiring credit. This was announced with all the fanfare by the Treasurer.It's a credit that goes to businesses for hiring workers between the ages of 16 and 35 years old. When it was announced, it was projected that it would deliver 450,000 jobs throughout Australia. Have a guess how many it's delivered. The number was reported on the front page of The Australian Financial Review today, and it's 521. By this point, it should have been delivering 10,000 jobs, yet it has delivered 521. I bet the member for Longman wasn't aware that that article was coming out when he submitted this motion saying what a success this JobMaker hiring credit has been, when, clearly, it has not, only delivering 521 jobs. It's been an abject failure. The coalition MPs may come in here and try to dispute these numbers, but they're there for all to see on the front page of the newspapers this morning.

The problem with this program is that it's specifically aimed at younger workers, but, if you look at the recovery of our economy post COVID, the areas where workforce participation has recovered is in younger workers. Younger workers are doing relatively better than older workers. The problem is with older workers. Many older workers—particularly those in their late 40s, 50s and 60s—are not getting the job opportunities during the recovery. Labor warned of this when this scheme was put in place. It's the older workers that have been forgotten by the Morrison government, yet it's the older workers that need the most support to get back into employment. We all know that, if you look at the JobSeeker figures at the moment, the majority of people that are receiving those payments are older workers. They're not younger workers; they are older workers. And what's the government's response to these older workers, who have worked hard for this country for many, many years and built the economic wealth that we're all benefiting from today? Their response is: 'If you're on JobSeeker, you've got to work to find 20 jobs per month. Not only that, we're going to set up a hotline so that employers can dob you older workers in for not trying hard enough to get a job.' That says everything about this government's approach to supporting older workers in our economy. The failure of the JobMaker hiring credit just proves that this government is all announcement and very bad at delivery when it comes to putting its money where its mouth is.

This motion also goes to JobTrainer. It is a fact that, in Australia, since the coalition government was elected in 2013, there are now 140,000 fewer apprentices. They announced an additional 300,000 training places two years ago. Where are they? Where are those additional training places? They haven't been delivered. Once again, it's all announcement and no delivery. They've cut $3 billion from TAFE. TAFE is the principal provider in our economy of vocational training, particularly to younger Australians. What's this government's approach? 'We'll decimate it. In concert with Liberal governments at the state level, we will decimate TAFE and remove funding for it.' And that's exactly what's occurred. What is the result? It's not as many people getting apprenticeships, not as many people finishing their trades, and a skills shortage in Australia. Whether it's hairdressers, carpenters, electricians, seafarers, cooks, welders, motor mechanics—in the Morrison government's economy, we now have a skills shortage in these very, very important trades.

What's the Liberal Party's solution? 'We'll just import workers. We'll bring them in on temporary visas. Don't worry about training Australians up to get the skills to take these jobs. We'll just import workers into the country.' Now that COVID-19 has stopped migration, we're all paying for it, particularly farmers and businesses in rural and regional Australia who simply cannot get any workers. Their crops are being left to rot and not being harvested. It's the result of skills shortages encouraged by this government's policies and encouraged by the fact that its solution to labour productivity and its solution to providing enough labour is importing foreign workers. It's all come crashing down with COVID and the stoppage of migration. If this government were serious, it'd be investing in education— (Time expired)

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