Andrew Charlton (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian labour market is in a state of flux. We have never experienced so much change in the skills we need and the jobs that we do. That change is generated by a number of global trends, including the shift towards automation, which is changing the types of jobs that Australians do and also the skills that they need to do those jobs. It's also affected by the growth in globalisation, which has changed the type of work that Australians do, affecting the way that we compose our economy and the skills that we need to compete in the global economy. It's been affected by changing demographics and consumer preferences and the enormous growth of the care sector—child care, aged care and disability care. All of this has generated significant shifts right across our labour market, and the only way that we can respond to those shifts is by supporting stronger vocational education that provides Australians with the skills they need in order to participate in those jobs of the future.

That's why investing in vocational education is one of the most powerful things that a government can do. Strong educational attainment is a source of productivity, improving the lives of the individuals who benefit from that education. It enables them to increase their skills to become more productive, and to gain the security of jobs of the future that they know are sustainable, but also to support Australia's economy in these transitions. By providing the right skills, we enable entrepreneurship, we demonstrate our country's readiness to adapt to new industries and we enable ourselves to tackle some of Australia's biggest challenges.

We know that right now Australia's skill base is not catching up with that industrial change. We have too big a gap between the skills that we have and the skills that we need. Let me give you a couple of statistics on Australia's skills and labour shortages. According to OECD data from last year, Australia is experiencing the second-highest labour shortage amongst OECD nations. The skills priority list, which provides an annual assessment of Australia's labour market, most recently found that 36 per cent of occupations assessed were experiencing worker shortages. That's one-third of Australian occupations experiencing worker shortages, and this is up from 31 per cent in 2022 and 19 per cent in 2021. This assessment points to a consistently tight labour market as the source of the shortages. We simply don't have the skills to provide these industries with the workforce they need.

This ricochets through Australia's economy. It means we have consumers with unmet demands, it means we have industries that can't grow and transition into new areas and it means we have workers who don't have the skills they need to get the jobs of the future. That's why it's incredibly important that the government takes the action that it's taking to provide the information to the labour market so that we can guide and assist Australia's vocational education system and make sure the education system is focused on areas of skills shortage. We'll be able to identify the needs of the future and tailor our educational response to those needs so that vocational education is providing the specific skills that are required by the job market of the future. According to the assessment that I mentioned, labour shortages are being felt in many occupations right across the economy: 82 per cent of occupations in health, 69 per cent of occupations in ICT, 54 per cent of occupations in design and 47 per cent of occupations in education, as well as technicians and trades and the construction industry.

We know that, as skills become more demanding and as our occupations incorporate more information technology and other technologies, Australian workers will require more training and education. As workers change jobs more frequently, they'll require more vocational education to upskill and re-skill, as they shift between jobs within an industry. By 2040, the average Australian will increase the amount of education that they have through their lives by 33 per cent. They'll be getting extra education through increases in school completion rates. There will be more vocational education and more university degrees. Most importantly, these increases in education will occur throughout their career.

It wasn't that long ago that getting an education in Australia meant going to school, maybe going to TAFE and, for some people, going to university. By the time you hit 21, bang—your education was done. These days, we need to rethink the way we deliver education to Australians. We can't just give you a certificate in your late teens or early 20s, slap a debt to that certificate and wish you well for the rest of your lives because the rate of technological change, the rate of skill change is so significant that people will need consistent topping up of their skill bases throughout their lives. We won't just be able to provide people with all of the education in their life before the age of 21; we'll have to provide them with education consistently as they move through the labour market—upskilling, reskilling, changing jobs, adapting to new technologies.

This is the great challenge of Australia's labour market, to make sure we rethink the delivery of education so that it's not just something for young people, it's something for people throughout their lives and assists in the adaptation of our labour market to the challenges of the future. Vocational education plays a critical role in that. Vocational education that can be delivered in short bursts, that can be provided, in many cases, on work sites around people's other commitments: this is essential to ensuring that Australians can reskill and upskill to meet the challenges of the future and adapt to evolving technologies in the labour market.

Those skills are the skills provided by TAFE, and that's why investing in TAFE is such an important priority of this government and such an important priority of the government's agenda. TAFE has always been an institution that provides people with core skills in order to advance themselves, to get the right skills to get that next job, to get a promotion at their current job. TAFE's role in the Australian labour market has never been more important as we face significant dynamism and change right across the labour market. That's why this is such an important agenda for the government. That's why this government has made investing in skills and investing in TAFE central to its economic plan. That's why we believe it's so critical to Australia's economic growth, our productivity growth, that we make these investments, because without improving human capital we can't address the declining productivity in our community. Without investing in the skills of the individual Australian and our workforce, we won't resurrect the high rates of labour productivity growth that we were lucky enough to experience over the last two decades. And without labour productivity growth, we know there can be no sustained income growth. We know that living standards don't rise without growth in productivity over time.

Skills are the essential pre-condition to driving stronger human capital, lifting labour productivity, strengthening our workplaces, building stronger industries and enabling Australia to adapt to the challenges of the future. That's why this agenda is so important to the Albanese Labor government.

Debate adjourned.

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