Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Is it not a fact that under this Prime Minister’s watch Australia has reduced our public investment in TAFEs and universities by seven per cent—the only advanced economy to do so—while our global competitors have increased their investment by 48 per cent? Is it not also a fact that this year the Howard government is spending even less of the federal budget on vocational education than last year? How is Australia supposed to train the skilled workers we so desperately need if the Prime Minister refuses to make long-term investment in TAFE and trade training? Given that the Prime Minister created this skills crisis, why should Middle Australia believe him when he says that this short-sighted pre-election catch-up will fix it?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know what has happened under my watch: unemployment has fallen to a 30-year low. I know what has also happened under my watch: the battling workers of Australia have higher wages than they ever had under a Labor government. I know that this has happened on my watch: the strength of the Australian economy is greater than it has ever been at any time since the end of World War II. The problem with the figure relied upon by the Leader of the Opposition is that it does not include the vast majority of vocational and technical education expenditure in this country, but just university expenditure. It shows the single-tracked obsession of this Labor Party with university education. The only thing that matters to a Labor member of parliament is a university education. They have forgotten the value of technical education, and when you add all of the figures together, public expenditure on higher education is expected, by 2007, to be at $8.2 billion, which is an increase of 26 per cent since 1995.