Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As one of the few members of parliament who actually went from school straight into a trade, I can testify to the importance of apprenticeships, especially for young Australians to establish themselves in a workforce and as an opportunity further educate yourself. Some of the best lessons I've learnt, even in this place, were learnt on the factory floor when dealing with migrants and the unfair treatment that they received during that time. You also start to realise the importance of apprenticeships and how short-changed they are. They're working for sometimes 25 to 30 per cent less than the person standing next to them doing exactly the same job.

Labor has long been the party for the worker and for training, and TAFE is so important. It's important right across all fields, no matter what field you look at, which is why I shake my head when I listen to those opposite talking down TAFE and saying, 'It's no good; we should look at registered training providers.' Well, during the Morrison-Turnbull-Abbott mess we saw the important issues that people faced through the dodginess of some of the RTOs that were costing millions of dollars and not delivering anything. It's important right across, no matter what fields you look at, which is why I shake my head when I listen to those opposite talking down TAFE, saying that it's no good and that we should look at registered training providers. We saw, during the Morrison-Turnbull-Abbott mess, the important issues that people faced through the dodginess of some of the RTOs that were costing millions of dollars and not delivering anything.

If trade training was important to those opposite, why would they shut down trade training centres like, in my home state of Victoria, a trade training centre that actually encompassed the use of independent and public schools to train kids in things like building, construction—the workforce shortage we've had, which has helped create the mess that we were left with when we came into government—and automotive. And we know what happened with the automotive sector, when Joe Hockey stood in parliament and pushed Holden out of Australia while his Liberal mate in Victoria, Dave Hodgett, was sitting in the foyer at GMH trying to support the automotive industry. That's what we had. They did not care about trades. They never have, and they never will.

We wouldn't have the shortage we have if they'd kept trade training centres open, with the ability for kids in country areas to actually access trades and utilise different services at different schools. Assumption College had a fantastic commercial kitchen, so those that were learning the culinary trades could go there, no matter what school they went to. If you were into automotive, you could go to Seymore College or Whittlesea—same as you could go to Whittlesea, Broadford or other places to learn about building. That's a generation of children that went through school, became adults and didn't get access to the great support of TAFE or to the educational opportunities that they could have had if the former government not blown the budget that badly and destroyed training in Victoria and across the nation.

The importance of TAFE can never be underestimated. It's there for a fantastic reason—the opportunity to help kids build a great future and then have a great career. That's why it's important that we've committed to the $10,000 incentive payment for Australians going through construction apprenticeships—because we have a crisis in housing in this country, a crisis that started back in late 2017. It was at that time that we were talking about a housing crisis. I think the words used by those opposite were 'get rich parents'. I remember that strongly; under Turnbull, it was 'get rich parents'. That was your way to get a house. That was their excuse. The Leader of the Opposition is living testament to this; the only way he could get a house was through rich parents. But not everyone has rich parents.

The opportunity to learn a trade, go out, forge your own career and build in this country was savagely cut over the nearly six years that they were in government. That has become a national disgrace. We need to import workers to do the work while the training begins, but, at the same time, we're got those opposite saying that we shouldn't be doing that either. They don't want to train people. They don't want to bring people in to do the job. But they'll sit there and complain about a housing crisis that they were very heavily involved in starting in the first place. The housing crisis didn't start on 22 May; it started a long time ago. But it really raised its head in 2017, and those opposite put their heads in the sand and did nothing about it.

Supporting apprenticeships is so important for a whole range of things. The member for Hunter went through before the different trades that people need. When we look at every facet of life, we've got great apprentices that have been trained and gone on to successful careers.

I'm proud to have done my apprenticeship. I went to the Collingwood TAFE—although you try to avoid anything with Collingwood! It was a great learning curve to go there and meet hundreds of different people from across the state and from similar situations, learning. Sadly, we've seen a lot of the trades disappear off our shores. I was in the footwear and clothing industry, and that's now gone overseas. There's only a handful of small manufacturers here today. We've got to bring them back if we want to end our skills crisis. We must fix up our issues in relation to supply chains; we've got to start doing more here. It's this government—the Albanese government—that's actually enabling apprenticeships in this nation.

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