Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) | Hansard source

I commend the member for Barker on his fitting tribute to the loss of Ms Hincks. I think it's very important to mark that here in this place.

I come from a very proud manufacturing town. Ballarat workers, ever since the gold rush, have made things—and we still do today. Sadly, you can no longer buy Oliver shoes or Rivers clothes and you can't buy lingerie from the Lucas factory or Ballarat-made bells from John Bell. But there's still Haymes paint, Selkirk bricks and even Hakubaku Japanese organic noodles. Lovely confectionary from Mars, Gecko high-tech manufacturing equipment, McCain chips and right the way through to Deutscher hospital beds—these things are all made in my hometown of Ballarat.

Manufacturing is Ballarat's third largest industry, employing, on the most recent figures, almost 10 per cent of our overall workforce. We're proud of the livelihoods that it provides to so many families. Earlier this month I welcomed to Ballarat the member for Corio—a visitor from another proud manufacturing town, Geelong. Like the people in Geelong, Ballarat people know how important manufacturing is and how it needs to be nurtured by government. They know how much it hurt when the coalition government waved goodbye to the car industry, and they can see the damage inflicted by ongoing cuts to skills and training.

When the member for Corio came to town, the first place we went to was MaxiTRANS. For those who don't know, they build heavy duty semitrailers. At 75 years old, they are Australia 's largest trailer manufacturer. For Coles, Woolies and Toll interstate freight—any truck you see on the road—there is a very good chance that the trailer was made in my hometown of Ballarat. With the growing demand for freight, there is growing demand for their product. But they're being held back by a shortage of workers. In ideal conditions, MaxiTRANS would double their output. Their order book greatly exceeds their current capacity. They need 30 more welders alone, and even more labourers. And they told us that, if a welder walked through the door, they would give them a job and they might give one to their friends and family as well.

We need to get more Australian kids into these jobs—and more local kids. Soon the borders will open and we will have more overseas workers coming in, but we have a real opportunity to grow our skills base and train our kids for sustainable jobs well into the future. That's what the member for Corio and I spoke about at our next stop, Ballarat TAFE. The history of Ballarat TAFE is just as long as the history of manufacturing in Ballarat, stretching right back to the School of Mines in 1870. It is Australia 's fourth oldest tertiary facility and the oldest in the region. But what we saw was far more modern than that. We saw kids learning to weld via virtual reality, learning how to safely dig trenches, learning how to build a home and learning how to build our future—all in a state-of-the-art facility funded by the last Labor government.

Of course, there are not as many students as they could be. That's because the government has cut $3 billion out of TAFE. Across the country, there are 70,000 fewer traineeships and apprenticeships today than there were when Labor left office in 2013. In Ballarat, there has been a 15 per cent drop. That amounts to hundreds of workers who could be working today in our town raising their families, working good trades and helping businesses like MaxiTRANS reach their full potential. Unfortunately, nothing will change under this government. After nine long years, after almost a decade in office—and they are seeking a second decade—we know that.

The way to overcome local skill shortages is to train more local workers, delivering a win for local businesses and a win for locals who need an opportunity to get ahead. That's why Labor will provide free access to TAFE for Australians, create more university places and tackle the skills shortages that are holding our COVID-19 recovery back. Under Labor, Australians studying in an industry with a skills shortage will be supported through the provision of free TAFE. Our $1.2 billion Future Made in Australia Skills Plan will focus on closing the gap in key areas of skills shortages, with new places at university and at TAFE. This is a policy that's good for jobs and good for people looking to train or retrain, and it's good policy for businesses which need more skilled workers.

I'm proud of Ballarat's manufacturing history, but we want to have a manufacturing future, a future that can be made only here in Australia under an Albanese Labor government.

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