Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

National agreements are important, but national action is what is needed. The Jobs and Skills Australia occupation short-list in October 2025 saw that 29 per cent of assessed occupations are in shortage nationwide. Half of the occupations in shortage were technicians and trades relating to construction, engineering and automotive trades.

Infrastructure Australia said that construction workforce shortage for major project pipelines is 141,000 short of what is needed, and this shortage is expected to peak at 300,000 in 2027—only a year away. The shortage in regional areas is forecast to quadruple between last year, 2025, and 2027.

A report that was released in December 2025 said the number of apprentices and trainees in training contracts decreased by 11.3 per cent on the previous year. So did the number of trade contracts, by seven per cent. This should be ringing alarm bells for every single person in this place. Commencement in trade occupations declined by 29 per cent. Surely, we must do better. This is going to affect every single Australian.

Young people leaving school face a 10 per cent unemployment rate, and an underemployment rate of 17 per cent. There are lots of them in casual roles as baristas, but there are not enough being plumbers, being electricians, being sparkies. In past years, governments were the largest trainers of apprentices. Now we expect the private sector to do this. Back in the nineties, it was governments—federal and state—that would be the largest apprentice employers. Not anymore, but we've made it so difficult for small businesses to take on an apprentice. It is just too cumbersome and the rewards aren't there. It costs money for a small business, in those first couple of years, to have an apprentice. It's a massive investment for that business, and businesses are really struggling right now. There are so many expenses they just can't take apprentices on. No wonder we have a 29 per cent drop.

If we look at Roy Morgan Research from last November, it said the real unemployment rate in Australia, which included people looking for work, not just those currently counted as underemployed by the ABS, was approximately 1.63 million Australians, and the underemployment rate was around three million Australians, those who just don't have enough hours of work and would like more.

In 2024, according to ACOSS, more than 550,000 people who were receiving income support had been receiving it for more than a year, and 417,000—around 45 per cent of them—were aged 55 to 66. We know that for every one entry-level job, there are 25 long-term unemployed Australians who are competing for it. And yet, we are not addressing this. Most providers won't even work with a person to get a certificate III to get into those entry-level jobs that we desperately need for aged care or child care. You can't just walk into those jobs. You can't just say, 'I'm keen'; you need to have qualifications. Yet we have a system to work with unemployed Australians that doesn't fix the two together. There's a massive disconnect.

COTA last week reported that gen X, my generation, are experiencing discrimination in the workforce, and 25 per cent of older Australians are living in poverty. We discourage aged pensioners, many of whom would love to be continuing in the workforce, by charging them 50c in the dollar over a very low threshold when they're on the pension. This is contributing to the culture of ageism and we need to address this.

National Seniors say a five per cent increase in older people working would increase our GDP by $47 billion. So what do we need to do? There are a few things government needs to do. We need to focus on employing Australians of all ages first, not focus on importing people for roles. We need to invest in our own people. We need to provide real incentives for small businesses. We don't do that at the moment. If we want them to have trainees, if we want them to have apprentices, we need to help them. We're not doing it. We need to address ageist discrimination and this starts with government. We need to change the narrative. We need to allow pensioners to work without penalty. They have so much to give and they are being short-changed by us. And we need to invest in training and skills that will ensure people gain meaningful employment to ensure that we don't just have this churn of unemployed people. We have jobs, we have the people, so we need to marry the two together. We need to do much better than what we're doing now.

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