Julie-Ann Campbell (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When it comes to free TAFE, I have some real-life experience from just last week, because on Monday just last week I had the great pleasure of visiting not just a TAFE but the largest trade training centre in the entirety of the Southern Hemisphere—the Acacia Ridge TAFE. I'm lucky enough that it is housed on Brisbane's southside in the electorate of Moreton. When Minister Giles and I went to that TAFE, we experienced what apprentices and others uplifting their skills were doing. We visited mechanics who were upskilling on EVs so that, when EVs enter the market, they would know how to deal with them safely.

As future technology expands, those working people will have the skills that they need, and they get them at TAFE. We saw plumbers just a few months shy of taking their final exams to go out into the workforce and to get their plumbing apprenticeship stamped from that TAFE, giving them the skills to drive not only household plumbing but also work in construction. We need to build homes, and the skills to do so come from TAFE. We saw future chippies—people learning how to build a home, a home our country needs so that we can address the critical supply issues that this Labor government is working to solve every single day. I did have a go at the nail gun, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Georganas, and I assure you that we need people at TAFE who can build houses.

TAFE means something. It's not just about going back to school. It's not just about what they do. TAFE is about building pathways to secure work. It's about making sure that people can map out a future for themselves, supported by a quality education system. TAFE builds the skills that the Australian economy needs. It builds the skills that we know we need to drive the economy and to drive what our country needs, whether they're in housing, whether they're in construction, whether they're in health care or whether they're in education. TAFE—free TAFE, in particular—removes barriers, as the member for Swan said, and creates a country where we value those skills and make sure that people can have them. It is not just about providing cost-of-living relief to young people and people training to get jobs; it's also about making sure that we are building our nation to be something bigger and stronger with skills that people get at TAFE.

What a stark contrast there is between those of us on this side of the chamber and those on that side of the chamber when it comes to free TAFE. Those opposite don't back in TAFE. They don't back it in, because they voted against free TAFE. They told those students that Minister Giles and I visited at the Acacia Ridge TAFE that they shouldn't have free TAFE and that they shouldn't have the opportunity to go to TAFE to get skilled and to make sure that they have a pathway to a good, skilled country.

It's not just that we've been investing in free TAFE; this Labor government is focused on education and creating the skills that we need more broadly as well. It's why we've invested in free TAFE, but it's also why we've invested in 20 per cent off of student debt and why we have invested in $10,000 for apprentices to make sure that we have the people that we need to build homes of the future. And it's working. Free TAFE has supported over 740,000 enrolments nationally. In the first year of free TAFE, in 2023, there were over 355,000 enrolments against a target of 180,000 places. What that means is not only that free TAFE is something that is important for building our skills, our future and our economy but also that Australians want it—they need it. And the only way we're going to build those skills is with a Labor government in power.

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