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

If there were ever a day to be debating the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill 2022 in our parliament, it's today. Today we have the early childhood education sector in Australia taking a big, bold step to close childcare centres early. One of the main reasons why is because they're stressed, overworked and struggling because they don't have enough skilled staff to fill vacancies and to help them educate our youngest Australians. Today is also the day we thank our aged-care workforce for the amazing work that they do—another sector that is struggling with workloads, lack of staff and facilities. Quite often they raise with us—as do the union and the workforce—that they can't find enough skilled workers to work in the sector. And yesterday was National TAFE Day, when we celebrated the role that the public institution of TAFE plays in our country.

Those are three examples, just from today and yesterday, that demonstrate why this bill before us is so critical. We are in a skills crisis in our country. It's not something that happened just because of the pandemic and it's not something that happened because Labor won the last federal election. It didn't just happen since May, it's been building in our country for the best part of a decade—nearly a decade of inaction by the previous government: a decade of cuts, a decade of mismanagement and a decade of chaos that was created that exacerbated the problem. This was exacerbated particularly by what they did during the pandemic: decisions that the previous government made, like not extending JobKeeper to casual workers who work in those critical sectors, saw many of those skilled workers in aged care and early childhood education leave, and they haven't come back. The funding cuts that they had to vocational education and training meant that many courses in regional areas were not run because they couldn't get enough students in those regional areas to fill very large class numbers. There's a litany of examples of how the previous government exacerbated the skills shortage that we have in our country.

But our government is acting to address the skills shortage that we have, and one of the key parts of that is creating this independent, transparent body which will be made up of many stakeholders, to help give us the data we need to address the skills crisis. The Albanese government is taking immediate action to address the urgent skills crisis.

The very first piece of legislation that was introduced into the parliament was to create Jobs and Skills Australia, an independent agency. It is critical that our government, the Australian community and economy and employers have independent, transparent data to help provide us with the advice that we need to address the current, and emerging and future, labour market and workforce skills and training needs, to improve employment opportunities. It's critical that we have accurate data. That will be one of key functions of Jobs and Skills Australia. It will work closely with state and territory governments, not against them.

JSA will work with industry, employers and unions. 'Unions' may be a dirty word to the opposition, but it's a word that we should not fear. Unions and their members know full well the skills challenges that we have, and it is quite often unions advocating in this place, articulately, on how we can solve those workforce issues.

One of the key reasons that educators are taking action today is that there's simply not enough of them. They are stressed; they are tired—the same as our aged-care workforce. They have ideas and solutions on how we can fix these skills gaps. And we, as a government, are keen to work with them, to ensure that we meet those gaps and those challenges.

The background of this bill is quite simple: it's the government's commitment to establish this new body and to work in partnership, which is different to the previous approach. It is critical that we work with our state and territory governments, who have a critical role to play—particularly in the delivery of TAFE. They have a role and a relationship with employers that we shouldn't be working against but working with.

I'll give just a few local examples of this skills shortage that we have, as we all know; we all hear it, from talking to local businesses. In February 2022, 17 per cent of businesses reported that they did not have enough employees and that recruitment was difficult. For higher skilled occupations, it was sitting at 67 per cent. In my electorate, I feel like that's the same. I haven't spoken to an employer in recent times who didn't say they were looking for staff. We are a large regional centre, but we still struggle to recruit, like many other regional areas. I've mentioned early childhood education and care, or ECEC. Just last week, I was at Goodstart Strathfieldsaye. They're currently at a 65 per cent occupancy. They could open more rooms but can't because they don't have the qualified staff to open those rooms. It's the same situation at Shine and Bright. In Maiden Gully there's a great new centre with fantastic facilities and amazing staff; there's just not enough of them.

The skills shortage in our care sector should not be underestimated. In aged care, I was alarmed to have the report that, at a few facilities, nurses were being asked to work a 24-hour shift. After finishing their 12-hour shift, they were being asked to stay on until the facility could find a replacement nurse because somebody had called in sick, so it had ended up being a 24-hour shift. That's unacceptable. It's unreasonable. But that is the skills crisis we're in.

It's not just the care sector in my electorate that's struggling with skills shortages. At Bendigo railway yards—a proud business that goes back many decades—we still manufacture and refurbish locomotives and rail in our electorate. They are looking for staff across the board. They have a good union agreement and good rates of pay, but, because we haven't invested enough in apprenticeships and young people, as our older filters and turners and boilermakers retire there aren't people with the adequate skills to replace them. They have a great apprenticeship ratio but they're always looking for more people to work. As we start to bring more of those jobs back onshore, we need to make sure we have the skilled workforce to do the job.

So we've got skills shortages in rail manufacturing; in fact, in all manufacturing. We have skills shortages in food manufacturing. DON KR is the biggest private employer in my electorate. 'The bako', as it's called in Castlemaine, will hire anyone who passes their entrance test. They are keen for a workforce. They always have a recruitment ad in the local paper. They've taken the step of engaging Pacific islands workers because they cannot fill their jobs locally. The jobs that they have range from engineers through to people in accounts and people on the factory floor.

Hospitality is one that's often raised. Smashed by the pandemic—the stop-start nature of what we did for health reasons—businesses are still opening only a few days a week or closing their doors at lunchtime because they can't get enough staff to fill shifts. Hospitality is a rewarding job but it's still a tough job. You're asked to work late nights and casual shifts. Not everyone has the skills required in hospitality, and we don't have enough people to fill hospitality jobs.

The vet shortage isn't something that happened overnight; it's been growing for a long time. Vets continue to be on the skills shortage list, and they have been for probably 20 years. It raises the question of why the previous government didn't address this one sooner, given that they claim they are the representatives of regional Australia. It's not just farmers and the live export industries that are raising concerns; it's also piggeries and processors. Any member with a regional electorate that has livestock or larger animals would know about the drastic shortage of vets that we have in our country and the need to train more locally.

What tended to be the practice under the previous government's model was for skills shortages to sit on the list forever. They would never come off. Once they went on, it was hard to get them off. We weren't investing properly in developing our own people to fill the gaps. Another example of that, of course, is GPs. A number of MPs have raised this issue. We have a chronic shortage of healthcare workers, in particular GPs, in our region. I acknowledge that it's complex. It's not as simple as just creating more university medical places. My local primary health network tell me that about 70 per cent of the university medical graduates currently going through our system stay in the state public hospital system and about 30 per cent go on to be GPs. At that rate we'll have very few doctors left for general practice in our region as our ageing workforce continue to retire.

It's a complex problem and an issue that an independent body like Jobs and Skills Australia could look at. With the previous government it was patchwork—a couple of places here, a little extension there, but no overall, comprehensive workforce strategy to help tackle the crisis we have not just with the number of GPs but in our rural health workforce. This agency will be able to work with other agencies to address the problems that we have across our country.

This bill, essentially, also lays the groundwork for future legislation that would establish a permanent Jobs and Skills Australia and include a full range of functions and structures and governance arrangements. It is just the beginning. It is part of our broader plan.

There are other key parts. Free TAFE places that were announced at the Jobs and Skills Summit will work in partnership with the state governments and their free TAFE commitments. The announcement of $1 billion in a co-funded national skills agreement that will deliver 180 free TAFE places in 2023 is a good start. It will give Australians the opportunity for a vocational education in the area where we need people to work. The Australian Skills Guarantee will train thousands of workers by ensuring that one in 10 federally funded major projects have an apprenticeship, traineeship or cadetship—critical to making sure that we have the boilermakers and tradespeople that we need in the future for these jobs. A further commitment guiding the principle will be an underpinned five-year national skills agreement from 2024—not just the makeshift stop-start of the previous government—making sure we have that five-year comprehensive plan.

Probably one of the most important commitments from our government has been that at least 70 per cent of Commonwealth VET funding will go towards public TAFE, helping to rebuild our much-loved public TAFE institutions whose primary role is not profits but the education of Australians. The TAFE Technology Fund will help improve facilities—workshops, laboratories, telehealth and simulators—across the country. We've had lots of good investment in Victoria at the TAFE level from the state Labor government. This fund will help fill the gaps.

This is just the beginning. I could go on about the importance of skills. It's an area which is close not just to my electorate but to many electorates. It's an area where there are lots of answers, but now it's time for action. We do need to get working if we're going to address the skills crisis that we're having in our country. The crisis is a handbrake on our productivity and hurts our recovery from the pandemic. I strongly encourage everybody to support this bill and to reach out to workers and give them hope, to reach out to businesses and give them hope, that we will work with them to solve these issues.

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