Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm going after a couple of contributions there. Member for Mayo, even though I disagree with a lot of what you were saying there in terms of us not doing things, I appreciate the constructive contribution that you made there. Australians just want to see us working. Australians just want to see us working together, which is I don't think what we got from my neighbour, the member for Wright, who displayed a spectacular lack of self-reflection by blaming all of the problems on the system, by blaming all of the problems on housing on this government when those opposite had 10 years and they did absolutely nothing. In fact, all they managed to do was leave us with the biggest skill shortage in over 50 years. I know that because I was out there working in the community when the housing crisis really hit while they were in government. So for those opposite to try and say that it was us that was responsible, I suppose in many ways shows really that skills may not be the most interesting area of government but it is one of the most clear examples of the difference in values between the government and between the coalition, between a government that believes in free TAFE as being a force to liberate the entrepreneurial aspirations of future carpenters and plumbers compared to how the opposition sees it when the member for Cook in this very chamber, the Federation Chamber, described free TAFE as virtue signalling.

The problems that we have today are different from the problems that I had when I was living in the member for Parkes' electorate in Broken Hill, where I come from, where I desperately wanted to do an apprenticeship as a fitter and machinist. Unfortunately, I only ever got to the level of breaking things and not being able to fix things at Procraft. I'm not sure if Procraft still exists—the mining contractor—but I desperately wanted to be an apprentice machinist. I didn't make the grade and, because unemployment in Broken Hill during that time in the nineties was running at about 20 per cent, I was easily replaced.

Well, we've got a completely different economy now. There is no way that you can easily replace somebody who has the will to become an apprentice, so there is an opportunity here to train the people for the future. There are two things that I'd like to say here. One is that I believe very strongly through my own experience in small business that there are two ways to run a small business. You can invest in your plant and your people—improve the productive capacity of that business—or you can run it into the ground, you can strip the profits out and you can delay the investment. Just as you run a business, so you run the country. Whereas the government believes in investing in that to improve that productive capacity, the opposition has believed in delaying those investments and stripping the profits out. Unfortunately, we have seen the country run into the ground.

When I look at this motion, I find it impossible, really, to disagree with. These are facts here—the fact that we were left with the biggest skills shortage in more than half a century; the fact that we have secured a landmark five-year national skills agreement; the fact that we have reset how Australia plans, funds and delivers vocational education and training; the fact that you can see the proof in three statistics. From 2023 through 2024 to 2025, we have seen the shortages falling from 36 per cent to 33 per cent to 29 per cent. These are measurable returns on the investment that we are making in the National Skills Agreement, the heart of which really has to be free TAFE. Again, that's showing the values differences between the government and the opposition, knowing that we can invest in our people through free TAFE, that it is not a cost and that it is certainly not virtue signalling.

When you look at the areas that the government is focusing on—housing, care and support services, and clean energy—that really does, I think, sum up the other thing that I'd like to say, which is that Australia's post-war economic miracle was an investment in public housing and an investment in public energy. Getting those skills together in those two critical areas is not only going to give individuals a great future and a secure job but going to secure the productive capacity of our economy and Australia's future.

See this speech in context