Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Dunkley for the opportunity to speak to this very important issue. Fee-free TAFE is one of the most significant investments that this government has made in working Australians. Enrolments in priority courses like construction, early childhood education, nursing and clean energy have surged. Free TAFE is telling students that our country is willing to invest in their future. The case for fee-free TAFE is also economic. Every qualified worker that we train here is a worker that we don't have to import. Every young Australian who enters the workforce will contribute to their community, to our tax base and to Australia's productive capacity.

But, despite this investment, Australia still faces critical workforce shortages in a number of key sectors. According to Jobs and Skills Australia, roughly half of all occupations in the category of technicians and trades are currently in short supply. That's the consequence of decades of underinvestment in vocational training. Free TAFE aims to address this, although I am hearing from constituents like Ian Baker, who I met with in Kooyong last week, that, despite free TAFE, first-year apprenticeship opportunities remain very difficult to secure. Free enrolment is only valuable if it leads to completion and to a good job.

According to the National Centre for Vocational Education Research, around half of all apprentices who commence their training fail to complete it. For those who started in 2020, the four-year completion rate is only 47.9 per cent. Between June 2024 and June 2025, trade apprenticeship numbers fell by more than seven per cent, and non-trade apprenticeship numbers fell by more than 20 per cent. Young people in Kooyong are telling me that the most common reason for their walking away is that employers are unwilling to hire first-year apprentices. But they're also really dissatisfied with pay and conditions, and national figures back that up. A first-year boilermaker apprentice who finished year 12 earns about $587 a week before tax—perhaps $500 in the hand. One who didn't finish school could earn less than $500 a week. The median rent in metropolitan Melbourne is now $580 a week, and a room in a share house is often over $300 a week. The arithmetic is brutal. A young person committed to their trade can't fund themselves with $200 a week left for transport to the job site, for the tools, for their food and for a phone. It just does not add up.

Meanwhile, we know that 83 per cent of those who abandon apprenticeships are in employment shortly afterwards. Most end up in cash-in-hand labouring work in the very same industries, doing similar work but without the qualifications, without the protection and without the same future. We are losing their skills to the cash economy at exactly the time that our economy needs them the most. The apprenticeship system is under strain. Host employer networks are fragmented. Group-training organisations are overstretched. The paperwork burden on small operators is unreasonable. We should be making it easier for younger people to get a first break, not harder. We also have to be honest about who is bearing the brunt of these barriers the most. Young women entering male dominated trades are still facing structural and cultural obstacles, and First Nations young people face enduring geographic and system disadvantages.

I do support the member for Dunkley's motion, and I welcome the government's investment in fee-free vocational education to support the next generation of workers. I recognise that some in this place, like Pauline Hanson, have consistently voted against this measure, against free TAFE for young people. But the government's responsibility for apprentices doesn't end at enrolment. It extends to ensuring that the full pipeline works, from the classroom to the workforce, from the qualification to the career. That means genuine incentives for employers to take on first year or mature aged apprentices. It means reducing the administrative burden of apprenticeships, and it means seriously addressing apprentices' wages. The young Australians who are trying to build a future in this country deserve more than a good start. They deserve to finish, and they deserve a good job.

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