House debates

Wednesday, 28 May 2008

Questions without Notice

Skills Shortage

2:35 pm

Photo of Belinda NealBelinda Neal (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share 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 explain to the House what the government is doing to address Australian industry’s need for more skilled people?

Photo of Julia GillardJulia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | | Hansard source

I thank the member for Robertson for her question, and I know she is deeply concerned about educational opportunity and skills shortages in her electorate. Today is an important day because it is the first day that the government’s new body, Skills Australia, meets—and I congratulate Mr Phil Bullock, a former Chief Executive of IBM, who has agreed to lead Skills Australia for the government. This body is going to act in a crucial advisory capacity to government, charting where skills development is most needed and where skills shortages are most acute, charting where the government’s 630,000 training places would be best deployed to meet skills shortages and advising government on the long-term policy agenda for reform in the vocational education and training sector. Having Skills Australia is part of a reform process for vocational education and training, with the government in the recent budget committing $19.3 billion, including an $11 billion Education Investment Fund. All of this work is necessary because this nation is facing a skills crisis. Whether you are trying to build a huge resource project in the north-west of this country or trying to get a plumber to come to your home to attend to a small job, you are an expert in the skills crisis in this country.

Right across the country we are crying out for skilled workers. This has been a crisis a long time in the making and it was specifically made by the more than a decade of neglect by the Liberal Party in government of this vital skills agenda, a personal neglect by the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. We have moved to address the skills crisis immediately with 20,000 new training places. As I indicated yesterday, we have more than 3,500 students already enrolled and 380 registered training organisations signed up and ready to go.

This morning the Prime Minister and I visited a childcare centre where the skills crisis was on display, a childcare centre that would like three more skilled workers but cannot get them. I am very pleased to say that a number—more than 700—of the government’s training places which have already been taken up have been taken up by people who are going to work at certificate III level in the childcare industry.

From time to time members opposite in this place come in and pose as great supporters of the resources sector. We have seen that on display as recently as this week. But it has been my pleasure today to speak to the Minerals Council of Australia, and when you talk to them what they know is that the skills crisis is restraining the capacity of the resources boom. We need to be investing in skills in mining and in construction, and we will be doing that.

Later today I will be speaking at the master builders dinner. It is an industry that is suffering the constraints of skills shortages. This is the record of more than a decade of neglect, something that members opposite should be ashamed of. They have not only constrained the productive capacity of our economy, putting upwards pressure on inflation and interest rates, they have denied hardworking Australians the opportunity that increased investment in skills would have brought. Where a decade of neglect has built up, the Rudd Labor government is addressing the problem and part of addressing the problem is our new skills advisory body, and I congratulate it on its first meeting in the House today.