Brett Raguse (Forde, 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. Would the Deputy Prime Minister advise the House of the recent announcements to invest in jobs for today and drive productivity in the future?

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

I thank the member for Forde for his question. I know that he is concerned, in his constituency, about supporting jobs today and about ensuring that this nation wins the global competition for the jobs of the future. Jobs today and jobs of the future are at the heart of the budget announcements made by the Treasurer last night. This is a budget that delivers support for jobs today whilst building the infrastructure and policies we will need so that Australians can have the skills that they will need to win the global competition for the jobs of the future.

At the heart of this budget, of course, is continuing stimulus through capital investment—a $22 billion capital investment program to support jobs today. And much of this investment is directed towards renewing places of learning around the country, because we know how important those places of learning will be to Australians getting the skills they need for the jobs of tomorrow. Our capital investment goes to schools, trade training, technical and further education and, as announced last night, a major capital investment into universities and research infrastructure.

As the member for Forde said in his question, this budget not only delivers on that kind of support for jobs today but, through stimulus, capital investment and the infrastructure we need for tomorrow, it provides direct support for jobseekers. It particularly provides direct support so that they can gain the skills they need for the work opportunities to come. This budget presents an interlinked set of policies—through our jobs compact with retrenched Australians, with young Australians and with local communities. That is an investment of $1.5 billion. There are interlinked programs to support apprentices and related programs in the order of $5 billion and a $2 billion investment in productivity places. Those are record, huge investments in skills and opportunities for Australians.

Some of the highlights of these packages—they are displayed comprehensively in the budget papers—include assistance to unemployed Australians to train, through our training supplement of $41.60 per fortnight; the training and learning bonus; the education entry payment and funding for training in productivity places. The government will provide people on Newstart Allowance and parenting payment who are undertaking a 12-month course, with the equivalent of an additional $43 per week in financial assistance. The government in these packages is also assisting apprentices and their employers to complete their training through the Securing Australian Apprenticeships and Traineeships initiative.

But the budget does more. It provides cash payments of $3,800 to apprentices and trainees by redoing existing incentives and making them more efficient. An additional 14,000 apprentices will receive this support. Payments to mid-career apprentices will be extended to 25-to-29 year olds, entitling them to an extra $7,800 in the first year of training and $5,200 in the year after that.

This budget, beyond supporting jobs today and delivering assistance to jobseekers through our jobs and training compact, through our productivity places and through our support for apprentices and related matters, also invests in the jobs of the future. There will be nothing more important to Australia gaining its fair share of the jobs of the future than the performance of our higher education system as it leads us into the knowledge economy. That is why the government in this budget delivers a comprehensive response to the Bradley and Cutler reviews, with a $5.7 billion package to transform our higher education system into a system that responds to the needs of students—with places following student demand—and transforms our system. It does that by ensuring that there is money in the system and incentives so that universities partner with schools to create new opportunities for Australians from low-SES backgrounds to go to university. This is a measure to ensure that the sons and daughters of Australians, no matter what household they are born into, have an opportunity to go to Australia’s universities—not by reducing standards, but by having our universities and our schools work together to create an educational pathway for those children to deliver on the promise of this nation that every child deserves the best possible start in life.

In this budget we have restructured student assistance, student income support, so that it better supports Australian students and particularly targets that assistance to where it is most needed. We have put in this budget a landmark increase in indexation for universities, performance funding that will make a difference to quality and a new national system of quality regulation, and we have delivered major new capital investments. This is a transformation of our university system so that it can lead this nation in the knowledge economy of tomorrow for the jobs of tomorrow whilst we deliver on providing support for Australian jobs today.