Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion. Will the Deputy Prime Minister inform the House about the causes of the skills crisis that Australia now faces and the government’s response?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. This nation does face a skills crisis which is adding to inflationary pressures. We have been warned about it, and the former government was warned about it by the RBA on 20 occasions. I know that in this place there are members opposite who simply do not understand the dimensions of this crisis. I refer them to the words of Suncorp Chairman and Tabcorp Director, John Story, who is also the Chairman of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, who delivered this damning assessment of the former government’s approach to skills shortages:

We should have been addressing infrastructure issues. We should have been addressing skills shortages five years ago. I mean, we talked about it. These issues were discussed around board tables like this for the past 10 years, and the chickens are coming home to roost and there is no short-term fix.

That is a message from business about the dimension of skill shortages. Whilst business is delivering this message, members opposite live in denial. We have had the shadow minister for training saying that skills shortages were ‘just a matter of where we are in the business cycle’—a denial that there is even a skills crisis. And the shadow Treasurer has been quoted as saying:

The truth is ... Australia does not have a chronic skills shortage ...

This is the opposition in denial about their legacy and in denial about a contemporary problem facing the Australian community and its economy. Today’s Grant Thornton survey shows that 58 per cent of the businesses surveyed identified skill shortages as the biggest constraint to their growth. Whilst the former minister for vocational education and training may not have done much about it, at least he was prepared to acknowledge that there was a skills crisis when he said:

We have got a problem with skills shortage. I mean, we knew it was coming, but it has arrived with force and, you know, it is only going to get worse.

How were these skill shortages created? If we look at where the former government put investment in skills development, we see some remarkable things. We saw $3 million invested in the provision of training and qualifications in nail technology. Mr Speaker, you might well think to yourself: ‘That’s good. Hammering nails into wood, building things—skill shortages in the construction industry—$3 million into skills training for nail technology.’ You might be thinking that that is a good thing. It is not those sorts of nails that we are talking about. We are talking about fingernails. We are talking about $3 million being invested in skills training so that people can have manicures—a file and paint, a set of acrylics. That is what the former government invested in: $3 million in nail technology.

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Really?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Really, Prime Minister. I accept that the Leader of the Opposition is a man of the world and he probably understands the merit of a manicure. He probably particularly understands the merit of a manicure in a party room that is beset by claws that are unsheathed and out. But I would ask the Leader of the Opposition and those that sit on the opposition front benches: when in government, how did they come to the conclusion that with skill shortages besetting the Australian economy the most important thing we needed was 1,232 more Australians qualified to provide manicures and 700 more Australians qualified to apply make-up and cosmetics—a total cost of $3 million for the manicures and $1.5 million for the make-up and cosmetics? This was their investment in training.

Whilst the mining sector and the construction sector were calling out for skilled workers, you might not have been able to get a house built but you could always go down to the beauty parlour and make yourself feel better about it. That was their contribution to training in this nation—hardly meeting the needs of working families, who need the real skill shortages in this economy fixed.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

I am not denigrating the occupations of providing manicures and providing make-up services—but I am suggesting that Australia’s skills shortages are in areas where the former government did not invest. Part of Labor’s strategy is to broaden and deepen our investment so that we can meet the skills shortages in the economy. We will be addressing that with our 450,000 training places. We will be addressing that with skills investment at certificate III level and beyond. We will be addressing that with urgent investment in skills shortage areas. The former government neglected the skills crisis; the present opposition does not even realise it exists. We will be investing to fix it, to make sure that working Australians can upgrade their skills and unemployed Australians can get access to training, and to make sure we take inflationary pressures out of this economy.