Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Jobs and Skills Australia Amendment Bill 2023. AEMO predicts that Australia will need an additional 12,000 workers in the energy sector by 2025 if we are to realise our ambition to become a renewable energy superpower. We clearly have a task ahead of us, but we are up for it. The race to net zero carries a moral as well as an economic imperative. But it won't be delivered with slogans. It demands a pool of human capital that is as vast as it is deep. Previous Liberal governments made that pool as shallow as a car park puddle. A lack of investment and a failure to plan have meant that Australia has the second-highest labour supply shortages in the OECD, according to their 2022 update, only ahead of Canada, which is in worse shape. The most recent labour market update from the quarter ending in December of last year shows that skill shortages persist in critical areas like nursing, aged care, early childhood education, IT and construction. The most in-demand occupations are registered nurses, software programmers, age-care and disabled carers, mechanics, GPs, engineers and early childhood educators. These are not skills that we can afford to have in short supply, and the numbers are staggering. For the three-month period to December there were over 8,300 vacancies for nurses; 6,300 for IT professionals; nearly 5,000 for aged-care and disability workers; 4,300 for educators; and 4,200 for construction managers.

The report showed that over the past year around a third of new jobs needed a university pathway and that nearly two-thirds of jobs required VET qualifications. It's the reason we are so heavily backing our TAFE sector, with 180,000 fee-free TAFE spots already announced and with an additional 300,000 places available to the states, subject to an agreement. This is not a crisis which simply emerged out of the blue and it's not merely a consequence of international conflict or economic turmoil. No, this crisis is the product of a decade without a national coordinated skills plan.

The Albanese government is wholeheartedly committed to tackling this crisis. Last year we delivered our promise to make Jobs and Skills Australia an independent statutory body. Now we have introduced legislation to make it permanent. The Jobs and Skills Australia Amendment Bill 2023 is a product of extensive stakeholder consultation with industry, employer bodies, unions, education and training providers and state and territory governments. It's the work of a government that is truly committed to listening, understanding and taking action. It is no accident that our first major stakeholder event was the Jobs and Skills Summit in September of last year. It signified our determination for a tripartite engagement with unions, business and the states to turn this crisis around. A permanent Jobs and Skills Australia will develop a work plan to support the government in tackling skills development. The bill establishes a commissioner and deputy commissioners, with merit based appointments, and a tripartite ministerial advisory board that is representative of their respective sectors, industries and stakeholders, including universities, the states and employer groups. Key functions will include research intelligence, developing partnerships with stakeholders and providing advice to government.

Under this bill, Jobs and Skills Australia will inform government decision-making about migration. Evidence based skills advice should guide our migration policy, which for too long has been skewed towards low-skills insecure low-paid workers. We need to turn this around. The bill will ensure that all government policies are informed by evidence. Research will be conducted around workforce participation, with a particular focus on improving outcomes for women, First Nations Australians, older workers—over 55 years—and workers with disabilities, as well as those from culturally diverse communities. The sense of inclusion and workforce participation that many of us take for granted is denied to too many Australians. It needs to be seeded with good policies and grounded in data and the lived experience of the people who have faced these barriers. JSA will probe the experiences of insecure workers and the impact of those on social and economic outcomes.

This work is complimentary to the 'secure work, better pay' bill we passed in December last year. The bill will allow for strategic planning and investment in education and training. This is critical to delivering the Albanese government's key priority areas, including energy transformation, rebuilding Australia manufacturing, keeping up with digital technologies, supporting the health and care economy and upskilling our defence industry. We aren't going to get to net zero without the right training pathways, like $100 million for New Energy Apprenticeships.

Many of our skills shortages are driven by a lack of skilled workers, and the solution lies in education. The Albanese government has already begun to address this by expanding the Australian Apprenticeships Priority List and by providing more university and fee-free TAFE and vocational education places. When our workers have the right skills they will have more choice and more security. When our workforce has the right skills our economy will thrive. This bill will create a bigger and better trained Australian workforce. Every Australian deserves secure and meaningful work, and under this bill we are closer to making that a reality. I commend the bill to the House.

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