Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill 2022. The coalition understands that this legislation will become law and we will be supporting the bill. However, in my second reading contribution I want to acknowledge the significant deficiencies that have become apparent in the legislation that is being looked at before the Senate.

The coalition is sceptical about the benefit of the new arrangements, given that it has taken considerable time for any clarity on the organisation itself, the structure of the organisation and its remit. The government's stated objectives are to drive vocational education and training and to strengthen workforce planning by establishing an organisation that includes employers, unions and the training and education sector.

It is important to note that this is the first of two tranches of legislation regarding Jobs and Skills Australia. The bill before us merely establishes the agency within the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. It is unfortunate that the Labor Party were not able to outline the full remit and scope of this agency or how it will operate before they pressed ahead with establishing a new part of the bureaucracy. As a result, over 150 days into this new government, we only just recently found out the full remit of Jobs and Skills Australia. It is, frankly, just a reconfigured National Skills Commission, with some union paymasters appointed to the board. While developing better information, coordination and leadership of Australia's workforce and skills is a noble aspiration, this function is already being provided by the National Skills Commission, established by the former coalition government in 2020.

Over our nine years in government, the coalition strengthened and expanded Australia's vocational education and training system—after, of course, we cleaned up the mess that the former Labor government had wreaked on the VET sector in Australia. I am particularly referring to their disastrous VET-FEE HELP policy, which decimated vocational education and training in this country. The coalition achieved record investment in skilling Australians, including our $2 billion JobTrainer Fund, which was specifically training Australians in areas of labour market demand, and our $1.9 billion for the Supporting Apprentices and Trainees program, which is, without a doubt, one of the most successful programs a government has ever put in place in relation to apprentices.

The coalition introduced this wage subsidy to shield apprentices and trainees from the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic—because, when a pandemic hits, who are the first people to be let go? It is the apprentices. The coalition understood that we needed to take strong and decisive action to ensure that this didn't occur, and we were successful. There was $1.91 billion in wage subsidies paid through the Supporting Apprentices and Trainees program. We have assisted with that wage subsidy around 74,900 employers and we supported over 152,700 apprentices and trainees.

We also invested $1.5 billion in our Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements. In terms of that, we invested $4.8 billion over four years, from 2020 to 2025, through the Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements wage subsidy, to support businesses and group training organisations to take on new apprentices and trainees during the pandemic. This included $1.2 billion that we announced in the 2020-21 budget, and a further $2.7 billion announced in the 2021-22 budget. We also invested $716 million to help second- and third-year Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements apprentices to complete.

The coalition government expanded support to help apprentices finish their training, protecting the skills pipeline delivered under the government's successful $3.9 billion Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements program. We actually had record trade apprentices in training: 220,000 of them. We established the National Skills Commission, which tonight, unfortunately, we will be abolishing, to identify emerging and future workforce skill needs. We delivered 10 industry training hubs in regions with high youth unemployment—I understand that they also, unfortunately, will be cut by the Albanese government. We delivered $75.3 million to revitalise TAFE campuses across Australia and, of course, there was our $585 million investment to deliver on the report for the skills and training system for tomorrow.

The National Skills Commission currently, under the outstanding leadership of the National Skills Commissioner, Adam Boyton, monitors reports, researches and analyses employment dynamics across different groups, industries, occupations and regions. It considers how changes in the labour market will impact jobs and how those changes will impact the economy's education and skills needs. It also has an important role in simplifying and strengthening Australia's vocational education and training system.

The Minister for Skills and Training actually stated that Jobs and Skills Australia will build on the National Skills Commission and has, given the resource profile, indicated that National Skills Commission staff will come across to Jobs and Skills Australia. In fact, we are told that Jobs and Skills Australia will be cost neutral because the existing funding for the National Skills Commission will cover the work for Jobs and Skills Australia. So the question that really does need to be asked is: is the new agency doing more than the current agency, the very successful National Skills Commission, or is it doing the same amount of work? It appears that Labor are just rebranding the National Skills Commission. Of course, this is something that the coalition will be monitoring very, very carefully because we know that the National Skills Commission has done, under Adam Boyton, absolutely outstanding work.

The National Skills Commission was of course a key part of how the coalition government got the vocational education and training sector in Australia back on track. As I said in my opening comments, the coalition of course, when we came into government, inherited an absolute mess. The absolute decimation of the vocational education and training sector in Australia had been caused by the former Labor government, by certain policy decisions that they had made. What worries me more than anything, particularly when we look at the bill that we have before us tonight, is that we're over 150 days into the Albanese government and it is becoming increasingly clear that they have no plans for skills in Australia. On any analysis, the Labor Party inherited a booming skills and training sector from the coalition government. There was, again, on any analysis—anyone will tell you—real momentum in skills and training, thanks to the policy decisions that had been made by the former coalition government.

The few announcements that we have seen the Albanese government make have been delayed in implementation—of course, to align with the much-hyped Jobs and Skills Summit, where the Prime Minister announced an additional 180,000 fee-free TAFE places for 2023. It sounds good, but it also belies the truth. We have since learned that the Prime Minister misled the Jobs and Skills Summit. His training blitz is nothing more—as we now know and, quite frankly should have expected—than marketing spin, with the vast majority of funded positions not new or additional at all. In fact, reports in the Australian newspaper suggest that of the 180,000 committed places, over 66 per cent already exist and will only be further subsidised—hardly attracting real momentum in skills and training in Australia. In fact, just 45,000 of them will be new and all of them were already announced as part of Labor's fee-free TAFE pre-election commitment. Most incredibly, 15,000 of the aged-care places were announced in the coalition government's March budget through its JobTrainer fund. So the Labor Party, in doing that, have re-announced 15,000 new places that we announced when we were in government in March.

I think, though, possibly from the skills summit, the announcement that has well and truly sent shivers down the spine of the industry-led training providers is the Prime Minister's reveal that—quite literally—the funding will go to public training providers only. This has sent a shiver through the industry-led training providers because we know that privately registered training organisations do 75 to 80 per cent of the training across our VET sector in Australia. On top of that, they're estimated to train 79 per cent of all women across the training system.

The coalition's perspective is very clear, unlike the Albanese government's perspective. We need an even-handed approach, to the entire skills sector, that provides choice for our next generation. We would be extremely concerned if Jobs and Skills Australia embedded a bias for any part of the skills sector, so we need to safeguard and prevent unions from dominating this agency and turning it into an entity that only backs public providers in Australia.

When I look at the Labor Party's track record on skills, again, I start to fear for the success of this agency. When they were last in government, despite all their talk, despite all their rhetoric, despite all their announcements, Labor delivered system-wide policy failures. In fact, many in the sector still talk about the dark old days of the former Labor government and the system policy failures that they delivered.

The last Labor government decimated vocational education and training in Australia. Apprenticeship numbers took a nosedive. That is the reality when it comes to skills policy: Labor failed. When they last left office, apprentice and trainee numbers were in freefall, with the number in training collapsing by 22 per cent or 111,300 between June 2012 and June 2013. This was as a direct result of funding cuts by the Gillard Labor government in 2012.

The worst policy failure, when it came to skills and training under the former Labor government, was the disastrous VET FEE-HELP system, which literally saw the reputation of Australia's skills system hit rock bottom—as tens of thousands of Australians were loaded up with debt for doing courses that would never, ever land them a job. That is, of course, if the course they had enrolled for even existed. I hate to tell the taxpayer, but in 2022 you are still picking up the tab for this enormous public failure, to the tune of now over $3.3 billion. That is $3.3 billion the Australian taxpayer has paid out in relation to Labor's disastrous policy of VET FEE-HELP. In fact, over half a billion dollars—$516 million—was paid to over 37,000 students in the last financial year alone.

That is the legacy of the former Labor government when it comes to skills in Australia. The scheme was established by the Labor government in 2008, expanded in 2012, and was plagued by system-wide rorting, with some training providers exploiting loose rules and charging students substantial debts for training that they never undertook or benefited from. It also targeted people with disabilities and substance abuse issues, public housing residents, non-English speakers and others with—lo and behold!—offers of free laptops and other incentives.

That is the system the coalition government inherited from Labor, and yet we turned it around. We turned it around with good policy decisions. The system that the Labor government have inherited from us is one that, quite frankly, should be the envy of many in the world. So, yes, whilst this bill will pass through the Senate tonight, we fear it is nothing more and nothing less than effectively reconstituting the coalition's successful National Skills Commission. But the one fundamental change—and we will explore this in the committee stage—is with some union directors. I certainly hope that, unlike other poor Labor policy, it does not end up costing Australia and the Australian taxpayer billions and billions of dollars for minimal and adverse outcomes.

The Senate transcript was published up to 20:00 . The remainder of the transcript will be published progressively as it is completed.