Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker Wilkie, for the opportunity to discuss what is indeed a very important issue—apprenticeships in Australia. The member for Bennelong asked us to commend the government in relation to a number of things. I think the Albanese government wants to be commended on a number of things, including the state of the economy, but that's pretty hard to do at the moment. A cursory look at the numbers for which they are being asked to be commended compares the June 2025 data of apprenticeships with June 2019 data, and they say we've got a favourable outcome in those six years. Why would the Albanese government want to do that? It's quite simple, really. It's because, if you compare the building apprenticeship numbers for June 2025 with those of June 2024, you get a different trend. The numbers are going backwards.

The National Centre for Vocational Education Research statistics for apprentices and trainees in the 2025 June quarter state that, compared with the 2024 June quarter, commencements declined by 29.2 per cent. The largest decreases were among the food trades workers, down by 58 per cent, and construction trade workers, down by 27.1 per cent. Completions increased by 26.9 per cent overall, which is pleasing, including construction workers, predominantly plumbers. Another number that I think is important for this debate is that, as at 30 June 2025, there were 307,080 active in-training apprentice and trainee contracts nationally. When the coalition government left office, there were 428,150 apprentices and trainees in training across the country. So, on that measure, we appear to be going backwards. But I think acknowledging that there's a problem and it's multifactorial is the first thing, so we need to accept that, and then we need to work out what to do about it.

My experience from my electorate is that employers are finding it more difficult to take on apprentices, and they're finding that they're not incentivised enough to take on apprentices. They're also finding—and I'm hearing this a lot—that the TAFE system is failing industry. It's not working as well as it should. I think our approach to TAFE on our side of politics is to have better TAFE. The approach on the government's side is to have free TAFE. Free TAFE sounds good, but I think that better TAFE is what the industry is asking us for.

It's an experience that I had when I travelled through Europe on a Churchill Fellowship, which I was very grateful to receive, to look at the integration of industry and education in comparable economies. I saw the German system of vocational education and just what a high quality of apprentice and worker that that delivers. What I found was that their vocational education and training schools were superior to our TAFEs, both in terms of the teachers and in terms of the facilities. The apprenticeship system and how coordinated it is with industry was very eye-opening. A typical apprentice in Germany will do three days of an apprenticeship with a company—for example, Mercedes-Benz, which I visited in Stuttgart—and then they'll do another two days of that week at a vocational education training school, which is their version of TAFE. The curriculum that was in TAFE was designed by the chamber of commerce, not by the government. So we have a very coordinated effort between these two sectors—the vocational education training sector and industry coming together to say, 'What do we need, and what does that look like?' I don't see that in Australia, and I see that trend getting a bit worse.

So I think that there's a lot of work to do on apprenticeships. I will refrain from commending the government on what has happened so far. I think we are going backwards, and we need to look at ways that we can not only increase the number of apprentices but improve the overall education that apprentices get and make sure that they're ready to drive Australian industry into the future.

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