Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Skills and Training) Share this | Hansard source

When we left office there were 415,000 trainees and apprentices in the system. Today, after four years of Labor, there are over 107,000 fewer. That's the reality of bringing this motion to the House. The track record of Labor in apprenticeships and training is so appalling, and I'm going to spell it out for every one in the room.

Before I do that, the speaker just before said she was proud of her productivity rates under Labor. They're some of the lowest in the world, in the OECD. The productivity rates in Australia at the moment are nothing to be proud of. But Labor will, of course, take credit for that. She spoke about how they see TAFE investment as responsible spending. I'm going to share with the room some of the completion rates in the TAFE system as opposed to the private sector, and they are in stark contrast.

I've outlined that we had 415,000 trainees and apprentices in the system when we left. There are 107,000 fewer today. By 2027, it is forecast that we will be 300,000 skilled tradesmen short to meet not only our Olympics bid but just the day-to-day infrastructure required. Look at the housing situation we've got at the moment. When we were in office, the Housing Industry Association state that house construction was around 200,000 to 220,000 a year. A simple Google search will confirm that today, under Labor, it's 170,000 on average. If you listen to their ambitious targets about housing constructs, on average they need around 255,000 now to meet their target. Without the skilled tradespeople coming into the system, we'll just never get there. We will never get there.

So, rightfully, Labor have taken on a very aggressive immigration position where they've got 1.2 million extra migrants in the country. That's not to mention we're not too sure where all of them will live, and that is putting pressure on our housing sector. But that's not a debate for today. I want to stay in the skills shortage area. You would have thought, with all those extra migrants coming in, that that would have dealt with the shortage, but it's only expanded the problem. We need to have migration, but it needs to be targeted migration.

But the unions will not have it. They won't bring the electricians in. They won't bring the chippies in. They won't bring any of them into the country. Instead we have this inflationary pressure whereby the RBA was forced to push up interest rates the other day because the cost of housing is going up. The RBA's data the other day factored in 21.7 per cent in private sector demand. So we've got skills down and immigration up, and these guys—Labor—come into the House and say, 'We're going to fix it all with the TAFE system and we're going to throw a bucketload of money at it.'

I asked one of the peak bodies today, before coming in, to send me what they think the issue is. They were quite adamant. They said that whenever either government, us or Labor—and Labor do this more often than we do—take the financial incentives away from the employer the apprenticeship numbers and training numbers fall off a cliff. We used to partner with small business to the tune of around $8,000 to help subsidise a skilled tradesperson, an apprentice or a trainee. Labor were at $4,000, and we got them up to $5,000, kicking and screaming. But the only way we're going to fix this skilled labour issue is to partner with small business, and everyone knows Labor hates small business. (Time expired)

See this speech in context