Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Childhood Learning) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the topic of apprenticeships. Looming skills shortages persist despite numerous efforts by successive governments to increase apprenticeship incentives. Particularly in the building and engineering disciplines, there are significant shortages in professionals and tradespeople. Yet despite these recognised shortages, and virtually guaranteed jobs, completion rates of apprentices in the trades are very poor. The Housing Industry Association undertook research in January this year which indicated shortages of approximately 60,000 workers in residential construction alone. This is expected to blow out to 65,000 by 2012. The National Centre for Vocational Education Research has estimated that around half the people who start an apprenticeship fail to complete their qualification.

With attrition rates in excess of 50 per cent of completions in some trades we need to be doing far more to ensure apprentices remain engaged and complete their training. Such high attrition rates do no favours for business or employees and will exacerbate shortages in years to come. Noncompletion of training causes a major strain on Australian businesses as these businesses invest heavily in training for their apprentices particularly in the first two years of an apprenticeship.

However, the strain is equally high on those people who have ceased training. According to NCVER research approximately one-third of people who drop out of an apprenticeship are unemployed 12 months later. Apprentices are renowned for being poorly paid, however, research undertaken by NCVER indicates that wages alone are not the reason why people fail to complete their apprenticeships. In fact, there is a plethora of government funded incentives on offer for apprentices and employers. Yet despite these incentives attrition rates are still very high.

We need to focus on the real reasons why people are exiting training early. It is not enough to keep reinventing the wheel when it comes to apprenticeship incentives. The Labor government has tried this and failed badly. One only needs to consider all the ‘reassigned’ apprenticeship funding measures listed in the last budget to see the evidence of this. Often apprentices decide that the work on offer does not really meet their expectations. Often young people in particular are not quite certain what path they want to follow when they leave school. We need to ensure that potential apprentices are able to access a ‘try a trade’ program similar to that undertaken by WorldSkills Australia which enables people to have hands-on experience in a trade.

School based apprenticeships are also a great pathway to a full-time apprenticeship once a student graduates. The Australian technical colleges established under the Howard government provided a gold-class standard for apprenticeship training for school students, ensuring they also gained a year 11 and year 12 qualification. Regrettably the Labor government has ceased funding these facilities. Too often policy decisions are made without adequate consultation with those who their decisions affect.

Along with my coalition colleagues I recognise the critical role that apprentices play in Australia and we want to engage with apprentices, employers and industry to work together to ensure that more apprentices complete their training and are retained by industry. I am not interested in the hardhat photo opportunities but I certainly plan on getting out to the building sites, workshops, kitchens and other workplaces to talk with apprentices and find out what would make a difference.