Matt Gregg (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to proudly support the motion brought by the member for Dunkley. Free TAFE has been an incredibly important program in the state of Victoria, helping to train the next generation of enrolled nurses, people assisting with literacy and numeracy in the classroom and, of course, tradies. Students at Swinburne TAFE in Croydon, where I visited as recently as last week, are learning those essential skills. We're seeing free TAFE make an enormous difference to individuals' lives, enabling people to gain initial skills after leaving school or to reskill midlife.

In an economy where there is so much transition going on at the moment, the ability for all of us to equip ourselves with new skills, mid-career, mid-working-life, has become more important than ever. With artificial intelligence changing the world of work, many of us will have to adjust to a new career. Often, when it's time to make a career transition, we're not carrying a wallet brimming with cash. Sometimes it happens suddenly and unexpectedly. To now have the option of being able to reskill and enter a new career, a new workforce, is now more important than ever before.

We're seeing the rewards of this across different sectors desperate for skills. When I talk to employers, they often say they're struggling to find skilled workers to fill their vacancies. We have a low unemployment rate, but we need to make sure that our workforce has the skills industry needs in order to provide the essential services we all rely upon, and free TAFE is an enabler of that.

The criticisms of free TAFE I've heard from the other side of the House seem to be based, frankly, on a contempt for the TAFE sector as it now sits. That's despite the fact that we inherited a system which was dominated by private providers whose reputations were various—we had some very good providers, but plenty were providing subpar education, and many have been deregistered in recent years due to the low quality of training and support they were providing. TAFE, on the other hand, has the trust and confidence of industry and of students to make sure that they are receiving the quality education they need and to bring the skills that are essential for their success in their next careers.

Victorians understand this so much so that even the state Liberal Party in Victoria recognise the need for free TAFE and, unlike the Liberals in this House, are actually not opposing the free TAFE program. They support it, as they should, because Victorians recognise the importance of free TAFE. In Victoria we've seen about 150,000 enrolments. Nearly 60,000 of those have already completed their courses, and many more will be completing them as they complete their training part time—a very significant completion rate. I know, from the experiences of my own family and of course many in my community that those who have transitioned into careers in nursing and in personal care as well, that this has made an enormous contribution not only to the lives of the students themselves but also to the community more widely—having access to those skilled professionals who can contribute to the provision of those essential services across the board.

In Victoria, the top three courses are literacy and numeracy support—something we desperately need, with both young people and older people needing support in literacy and numeracy at rates that are really higher than we've seen for a very long time; a diploma of nursing—we're talking about qualified enrolled nurses as well, able to administer medications and provide essential support to people in hospitals, aged care and other settings as well; and the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, which enables people to contribute their industrial know-how and their formal skills and qualifications to train the next generation of skilled workers. These are really important courses, and this is the kind of work that has been made possible through free TAFE. We have seen a large increase in the number of enrolments.

Now, the opposition have said this is a bad idea because it doesn't solve all problems at once. Completions and other aspects of the training system of course work together. This is a multifaceted challenge to ensure that we have the workers that we need, that completions occur and that employers have the incentives and supports they require. It's a multifaceted system. Free TAFE is an essential part of that. It enables people to enrol in the courses to build the skills we need without having a massive financial burden at the start of their careers, often when they least need it. It means young people don't enter the workforce already with a debt, unable to enter the housing market and limited in what they can do. This is a weight off their shoulder, as well as enabling industry to access the skilled individuals they need.

It has been an enormously successful program. It's a great pity that the coalition do not recognise the important contribution made by TAFE in our community. I can only hope that, with time, they will learn to see the value of it as we continue to build the skilled workforce. I know that, in the construction industry, which was raised before, as part of the Key Apprenticeship Program, we're already seeing about 11½ thousand people signing up for those key apprenticeships in housing construction. So we're very much focused on the job, and I commend the motion to the House.

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