Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Melton, in the heart of my electorate of Hawke, is now officially the fastest-growing area in the whole country with an annual population growth of 6.42 per cent. We've got one of the youngest regions in Australia, with 53 per cent of residents aged under 35. Over 73 per cent of our local workers leave the area to access employment every day, and this will only continue to grow if we are unable to create new local jobs.

Young people in the western suburbs deserve opportunities to access high-quality training close to home. It's Labor that stands up for TAFE time and time again, because only Labor believes in properly funding vocational education. When the Liberals get the chance, they do nothing but cut and slash funding for vocational education—they simply can't help themselves—because very few of them have any experience with the TAFE system whatsoever and, indeed, the benefits it can bring to communities like mine. Their shallow, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps ideology simply doesn't extend to people seeking to do a trade or TAFE course. We've seen it nationally and we've seen it in my home state of Victoria. The Victorian Liberals have shamelessly and savagely cut funding to the state's training system, short-changing the future of thousands of Victorians. This was aired by the Productivity Commission's report on government services in 2015, but it was already obvious for all to see. The report also showed that the decline in funding under the Liberals resulted in poorer outcomes for Victorian students overall.

Unsurprisingly, when the Liberals got their hands on the purse strings, the devastating effects flowed through to people's lives and their livelihoods. Upon the election of the Victorian Labor government in 2014, the government worked towards rebuilding Victoria's TAFE sector from the ground up. I make particular acknowledgement of my state colleagues Steve McGhie, the member for Melton, and Josh Bull, the member for Sunbury. Their tireless advocacy and hard work behind the scenes paid off late last year with a commitment that a re-elected Labor government in Victoria would deliver new TAFE centres for both Sunbury and Melton.

The $65 million to $80 million investment for the Melton campus will mean it can support hundreds of students once it's complete, with a focus on meeting demand for construction and skills training so sorely needed within our economy. The investment will also secure a TAFE for Sunbury, operated by the Bendigo Kangan Institute. Ever since the closure of the Jacksons Hill Victoria University campus, students living and working in Sunbury have had no local options. What this has meant for our community is that students are too often locked out of further training or study due to travel costs and other factors. This is born out in the numbers, with my community recording lower numbers for further study and training than the state average. The consequences of this are vast, and are carried around with the individual for life.

Jobs and Skills Australia's quarterly report that was recently released found that over the year to May 2023, 91 per cent of total employment growth was in careers that required post high school qualifications. More than half of that massive growth is in occupations that require vocational education and training pathways. This Labor government knows this fact all too well, and we're doing something about it. We went to the last election with a plan to train, retrain or upskill more Australians, helping us to tackle the massive skills shortages left behind by the previous Liberal government. We've made significant headway with this task, with all 180,000 fee-free TAFE places being filled and, indeed, exceeded within the first six months of the program. In fact, fee-free TAFE enrolments have hit more than 214,300 in the first six months alone.

The biggest winner out of this amazing result is the care sector, with courses across health care, aged care and disability care attracting more than 51,000 students across the country. The fee-free TAFE and VET agreement was only possible because of our partnership with state and territory governments. This has opened the door to more opportunities for so many people in my community, whether they're entering vocational education for the first time or retraining so that they can work in a new career and take on the jobs of the future that our economy requires. It's simple. Our Labor government is implementing a skills planning framework for the future of the Australian economy.

Last year, the member for Lalor and I hosted the outer western Melbourne jobs and skills summit in Melton South. We wanted to hear directly from locals across our community of the outer west about the shared vision for a more prosperous future for local families. We discussed the need for greater access to vocational and tertiary pathways for local students, as well as the desire to bring more jobs to our communities. The feedback that we got from the participants was absolutely invaluable.

It's also important that we take the opportunity to recognise the people that make all of this possible—our vocational educators. My mum was a proud public school teacher. She raised me to know the value of a good education and that every kid deserves the best start in life. She instilled in me and my brothers the core values that I carry to this day—fairness, collectivism and opportunity. Public education is a public good which collectively benefits every single person in this country, and it should be recognised for that. Our vocational educators do so much for their students and for our broader community. They open doors for opportunity, creating pathways and removing barriers for our students so that they can achieve their very best potential. We would do very well to always acknowledge their tireless efforts.

As our jobs and skills offering expands and we continue to work towards achieving effective, structured and sector based planning frameworks for our modern skills and training sector, we will continue to reform the system as required. We've already achieved a significant milestone in this journey: the establishment of Jobs and Skills Australia and the creation of ten jobs and skills councils nationally. The jobs and skills councils have been created to provide industry with a stronger voice to ensure our VET sector delivers better outcomes—the workforce that our economy needs for the future. They are tasked with bringing together employers, unions and governments to find solutions to the skills and workforce challenges that we're facing today and that we will face into the future. Jobs and Skills Australia has replaced the National Skills Commission, with the explicit role of forming policy development and providing expert and impartial advice to the government on workforce pressures and emerging trends.

It is always Labor that invests in vocational education. It is Labor that values the workers that that training and skills investment creates. Ultimately, it will be the Albanese Labor government that creates the workforce that our economy requires in order to be sustainable and prosperous into the future.

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