Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today is National TAFE Day, and I rise to condemn the Turnbull government's abject failure as the steward of Australia's skills and training network. The Liberals have demonstrated again and again how little they understand what Australia really needs in order to compete in the 21st century knowledge economy. TAFE should be the backbone of our skills and training network, but under the Liberal government it has been denigrated, attacked and near on destroyed. Make no mistake, this system is in crisis. Year after year, budget after budget, the Liberals have levied vicious cuts that have brought this critical national training institution to its knees. Their contempt is conspicuous, their derision undeniable.

Since the Liberals came to power, $3 billion has been ripped out of the sector, with Commonwealth funding for training at TAFE dropping by over a third. And then, when TAFE was at its lowest point in decades, the Turnbull government got another kick in by ripping a further $270 million out of skills and training in this year's budget to help fund its $80 billion tax breaks to big business, multinationals and the banks. This isn't about cost savings or efficiencies. This is a war on public education, and our former world-class training system is the casualty. In my electorate of Newcastle we have already lost more than a third of our apprentices and trainees since the Liberals came to office in 2013. Across New South Wales we've lost 175,000 students.

There is one sure-fire way to ensure that TAFE will live on, and that is to vote this government out at the next election. Labor gets the importance of TAFE, and a Shorten Labor government will restore it to the centre of our national vocational training system by guaranteeing that at least two-thirds of government funding for VET goes to TAFE. We will restore the $600 million the government ripped out of TAFE in the 2017 budget; we will invest $100 million, revitalising regional and outer metro campuses across the country; and we will waive up-front fees for 100,000 TAFE students.

But until we have a Labor government we must unite against the Turnbull government's ongoing cuts. That's why I have launched a local campaign and established a petition—which is at my website, www.sharonclaydon.com—to demand that Mr Turnbull stop his vicious attacks on our skills and training system. Please join me in telling the Prime Minister that we won't sit back and watch quietly while his government tears our TAFE apart.