Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak proudly in relation to this motion. This week is National Skills Week, but every week should be National Skills Week. Before coming to this place, I was a barrister. Before being a barrister, I was a carpenter, which meant I had to go to trade school. So I'm TAFE educated, and I am a big supporter of technical and further education. It is a vital link to our prosperity not just as a nation but as individuals—the ability to get out, learn a trade and then go anywhere in the world and be respected for it.

But there are some very significant problems in this country. I want to take you on a bit of a history lesson, because this goes all the way back to the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. There was an onset in those years of a philosophy that said, 'If you want to be someone, you need to go to university. Everybody should go to university.' So we saw a massive drop-off in kids doing trades, and what we're experiencing today is a knock-on effect of that philosophy—parents sitting around the kitchen table talking to their kids, asking, 'What are you thinking of doing when you leave school, dear?' 'I wouldn't mind becoming a carpenter.' 'No, you don't want to become a carpenter; you want to become a lawyer.' It's that rationale, it's that philosophy, that has seeped into this country and is causing us untold grief, because we have a massive skills shortage in this country now—absolutely massive.

I would pose this question: if the government's policy on fee-free TAFE is working so well, why have apprenticeship numbers dropped by 103,000 apprentices? When we left government, there were 415,240 apprentices; there are just 311,760 today. It's a drop of 103,000. Something is not working. We talk about a skills crisis. We talk about a housing crisis. The two go hand in hand. I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt, as a carpenter and as a licensed builder—still a licensed builder—the skills shortage in Australia is dire.

Just because you offer someone a fee-free place at TAFE does not mean that they will go on and take an apprenticeship. It does not mean that the courses in many different areas that fee-free TAFE is offering are closely aligned to the skills shortage that industry needs to fill today. There are many courses that young people and old people alike can do at TAFE, but many of them are not what Australian employers are looking for. If we don't marry the two, if we don't work with employers and ask them about the types of skills that they are needing and the shortages that they're experiencing—the member for Grey just gave a great analogy about investing in buying a bigger pump; all you're doing is pumping water out that cracked pipe. It's a very apt analogy.

But the skills shortage works in conjunction with the housing crisis that's driven by this government. They talk about building 1.2 million new homes; they have not got a snowball's chance in hell of building 1.2 million homes. Everybody knows it. One of the main reasons they can't do it is the skills shortage that the building industry is experiencing. I'll tell you why else: young girls, in particular, do not want to get a trade in the building industry because they see the appalling behaviour by the CFMEU on building sites every day, and they say, 'Well, why would I want to expose myself to that misogyny?' The Labor Party pride themselves on looking after women, and they— (Time expired)

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