Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I spoke to several oil and gas industry executives, and they told me of their concerns about the need to train more science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates. They talked to me about a particular job that is done in this sector and involves remotely operating underwater robots, which sounds to me to be a fantastic job. They said that they are getting Norwegians to do this job here in Australia because of the need that we have for more and better skills. That is just one example of the need to train more people in STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths.

They also talked to me about what they want for our future, which is to get more girls interested in those disciplines, so I am really pleased that during the budget reply Bill Shorten announced that we would take a number of measures to boost the skills of 25,000 current primary and secondary teachers in these areas; to train new teachers; to encourage students to study in these areas by writing off the HECS debts of 100,000 science, technology, engineering and maths students; and to encourage more women to study, teach and work in these fields.

It is so important that, when we think about where the jobs of the future are going to come from, with all of the challenges and disruption that we are going to have from automation, emerging technology, change and the challenges around the world from climate change and other megatrends, we talk about how we are going to train the future workforce. That has to start very young. It has to start with coding, science, technology, engineering and mathematics.