Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week has seen the Howard government introduce its new trade skills training visa. This visa will allow imported unskilled migrants to undertake apprenticeships in regional areas of Australia in trade occupations experiencing skills shortages. The reason the Howard government has had to take such steps is that it has presided over a massive skills crisis which is placing huge constraints on the Australian economy. However, this visa is not the answer. The visa will mean that many young Australian will miss out on apprenticeships. What is worse is that overseas apprentices will undercut the conditions of those Australians who do manage to get an apprenticeship. This new apprentice visa is a contractual agreement between the applicant and employer, meaning that the applicant will be beholden to their employer and to the job that they do. An apprentice has to accept the pay, conditions and work offered by the employer. A failure to do so will see them on the first plane home.

The former Minister for Education, Science and Training used to devote a great deal of time in this place ranting that Labor was not a supporter of apprenticeships—a claim that could not have been further from the truth—yet here we have the government introducing a measure that totally undermines the apprenticeship and training system in Australia. In my electorate we have a teenage unemployment rate for 15- to 19-year-olds of around 20 per cent, yet since 1997 the Howard government has increased the skilled migration program by an extra 270,000 skilled migrants and since 1998 has turned 270,000 Australians away from TAFE. That is just not right. If this government was so concerned about providing alternative forms of further education for young Australians other than university, why hasn’t it invested in TAFE? Why has it presided over a massive skills shortage in the traditional trades? Why is the government seeking to allow imported unskilled migrants to undertake apprenticeships in regional areas of Australia in trade occupations experiencing skills shortages?

My electorate of Ballarat has already seen first-hand the effects of the current skills shortage. Many people would be familiar with the case of MaxiTRANS, a major employer in my electorate that desperately needed skilled workers. It had won a number of new contracts and needed to fill them straightaway. Instead of having access to a pool of trained workers, it had to go overseas to source labour to fulfil its contracts. The government simply had not trained enough Australians to fill these positions. MaxiTRANS tried to meet its skills needs by finding workers locally but claims it was unable to do so. With no credible solution forthcoming from the Howard government, it knew the crisis would continue into the future. MaxiTRANS had also tried to recruit apprentices, but it then put some of these apprentices on hold because it needed skilled workers immediately.

It is a damming indictment that it is easier to source skilled labour from overseas than to train Australian kids for these jobs. The reason we do not have enough people trained in the traditional trades is that young people are struggling to get into apprenticeships in the first place. I want to take the example of a young person from my electorate, James. James is a bright young man who does not see his future in attending university. He instead desperately wants to gain an apprenticeship as a bricklayer. However, Jamie faces two barriers to fulfilling his ambition. The first is that TAFE is jam-packed and he cannot get a place in a pre-apprentice course for at least eight months. He is one of the 270,000 young Australians who have been turned away from TAFE by this government. The second barrier he faces is that of cost. James, like many young people, does not have access to a lot of money to throw around. Every dollar James has is already accounted for—swallowed up by food, petrol or other costs.

Labor’s approach stands in stark contrast to finding unskilled labourers overseas who can afford to do an apprenticeship. Labor looks to help young Australians meet the costs of attending TAFE and completing an apprenticeship. While James may be able to cobble together the money to get into TAFE, there is absolutely no guarantee that in eight months he will be able to gain a place at TAFE. This is why the government’s decision to allow imported unskilled migrants to undertake apprenticeships in regional Australia in trade occupations experiencing skills shortages is so short-sighted and potentially devastating for so many young people like James in my electorate.

Just because a local employer cannot put on an Australian apprentice does mean that there are not young people out there who want one. However, instead of training Australians first and giving them a helping hand, the Howard government has looked overseas for a short-term fix. The government has scrambled to try and justify this new visa by claiming that its trade skills training visa requires the potential employer to demonstrate that there are no local people prepared to take the job. That is a facade. Nowhere among the 50 questions on the employer’s application form does it require them to say they have even advertised the job. There are long-term solutions to Australia’s skills crisis rather than the patch-up solutions that this government is trying to implement. (Time expired)