Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will take that. When we talk about skills and training, I know it is very touchy for your side of the chamber, because you did sit there with your hands tied firmly behind your backs for all those years of boom and were caught asleep at the wheel. Fortunately, we will not be doing the same as your lot.

I will name the five students that I met. They are fine young Australians. They are Andrew Spence from Kelmscott, studying bricklaying, and Stephen McCagh from Armadale, also studying bricklaying. The boys very proudly took Ms MacTiernan and me out the back to show us the walls that they had constructed. I said, ‘I can’t leave here, boys, being half Italian, without you giving me a spirit level and I’ll see how well you’ve done.’ Concrete is in our breeding. Those walls were perfect, I have to confess. I said to the boys, ‘How do you do that? Every time I do one I get the lumpy concrete that makes one end of the wall stick up higher than the other.’ We then met with Rhys Elliot from Mount Nasura, which is a suburb around Armadale. He is studying steel framing. Another of these fine young Australians was Kenan Beaumont from Lockridge—for those who do not know, Lockridge is a suburb an hour and a half from Armadale—who trains and buses every day to go to the college because of the opportunity that he is given to do his certificate III up there. He is doing steel framing. We also met Jordan Manderson from Brookdale, studying cabinet making.

One of the projects that we were shown, apart from the brick walls, was a very fine cubbyhouse. This cubbyhouse—I kid you not—is probably the size of a one-bedroom, one-bathroom flat in Canberra. You would not believe that this project was put together by students in their first year. It was absolutely amazing, to the point that the member for Armadale tried to do a barter job and buy it from them for her grandchildren. I made the statement that I wished that cubbyhouse was around when I was a young bloke in the early years of my marriage because I probably would have spent plenty of time there when my wife decided I would be better off living in it for a few months.

Anyway, it was a fine visit and a great announcement by the federal government. The federal government has to be congratulated. Like I said, we will do everything we can. We will never, ever sit on our hands and preside over the greatest skills shortage in Australia’s short history. That will not happen. We have made that very clear.