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

It's great to be able to contribute to this motion moved on free TAFE, and I'd just like to go through the points in the motion itself. In the first point, the government asks us to celebrate three years of expanded opportunity, but let's look at what the three years of data actually shows. What it shows is that, out of roughly 650,000 fee-free enrolments since January 2023, fewer than one in four has resulted in a completed qualification. Now, a completion rate below 26 per cent isn't expanding opportunity; it's expanding enrolment numbers for a press release. Opportunity means someone finishes their course and walks into a job, and by this measure this program is failing the very people it claims to help.

The second point says 'despite opposition from the opposition'. This motion frames scrutiny as obstruction, and that's not what it is. This side of the House has asked three very reasonable questions about this policy: what are the completion rates, why is there no means testing, and where is the evaluation? These are very reasonable things to ask of any policy, and the government's response was to legislate the program as permanent before answering any of those. Making a program permanent doesn't make it effective; it just makes it harder to fix. The Business Council of Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and major employer groups have all opposed this legislation, not because they're against skills and training—none of us are against skills and training—but because they recognise that you don't lock in a program with a sub-26 per cent completion rate and no published evaluation.

The third point talks about the $1.5 billion investment. The motion celebrates $1.5 billion in spending as though spending itself was the achievement. But we've got to ask: what has that $1.5 billion delivered? For every dollar spent, roughly three-quarters has gone to enrolments that have not yet produced—and may never produce—a qualified worker. Meanwhile, apprentice and trainee numbers have fallen, with commencements dropping 36 per cent since the government took office. The question was never whether we should invest in skills; the question is whether this particular investment is working, and the government can still not demonstrate that it is.

The fourth point is the comparison with Victoria—and this is a distraction. What happens in Victoria is for the Victorian parliament. But in this chamber we are accountable for how Commonwealth taxpayers' money is spent. On that question, the facts are clear: a cleaner earning $60,000 a year is subsidising fee-free training for plumbers and electricians, who will go on to earn sometimes $100,000 a year. I challenge the word 'free' because everyone always pays for something. That's not to say that taxpayer money should not be invested in skills training for people who most need it, but this act contains no capacity to pay-test, no targeting of the most disadvantaged and no mechanism to ensure completions. Pointing across the aisle or pointing to the Victorian parliament doesn't change any of that.

I think everyone in this chamber supports skills, supports TAFE and supports giving every Australian the chance to build a better career. But what we don't support is spending $1.5 billion of taxpayers' money and getting a completion rate that wouldn't be tolerated in any other area of government. We wouldn't tolerate refusing to publish a proper evaluation of a program that spends that amount of money and then coming in here and wanting the chamber to somehow congratulate the government for it. I say to the government: show us the completions, show us the employment outcomes and show us it's working, and then we can talk about celebration.

My experience with TAFE and of having witnessed vocational educational training overseas, particularly in Germany, Sweden and Finland, is that their vocational education training schools, facilities and teaching are far better than what we have in Australia—and that has led to highly qualified people going into the workforce in those countries, and they're much more linked with industry than people here in Australia. I say to those opposite: we want people to access TAFE, but we also want a much better TAFE system than we have at the moment.

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