Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last night's budget delivers the plan the Australian people voted for. This budget is right for the times and ready for the future. Our budget will do three things: provide responsible cost-of-living relief that doesn't add to inflation, invest in the capabilities of our people and the capacity of our economy, and begin the very hard task of long-term budget repair. It's a responsible budget that starts to clean up that awful mess the Liberals left behind and begins to build the better future that the Australian people deserve.

I'd like to speak today on the second point: how Labor will invest in the capabilities of our people and the capacity of our economy. Australia is facing an unprecedented skills shortage, caused by the inaction and incompetence of the nine years of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government. Having skilled workers is vital for growing the economy and creating secure, high-paying jobs that are good for workers and their families. Particularly during this time of emerging new industries and technologies, it's vital that Australian workers have the skills to meet the challenges of the future and to position Australia to grasp the opportunities.

We need to provide a path for workers to seize those opportunities with transferable skills. Working in a globalised market, we must be aware of how we and industries can maximise support for growing our domestic talent and how we can attract a skilled workforce. According to the OECD, Australia is experiencing the second most severe labour shortages in the developed world. Labor understands this. Labor is acting. That's why last night's budget invests in the capabilities of our people and the capacity of our economy to boost productivity, grow the economy and get wages moving again.

Together with the states and territories, we are making a $1 billion investment in fee-free TAFE and vocational education places. We are providing 180,000 places next year, the first stage in our plan for nearly half a million fee-free TAFE places for Australians to learn skills for jobs in priority areas like the care sectors and the digital economy. This budget also invests more than $770 million for better schools, happier and healthier students, and more qualified teachers. We will invest $485 million to create 20,000 new university places over the next two years for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. As the Treasurer said, no Australian should be denied, by poverty, by postcode or by lack of privilege, their chance at a better future.

These budget announcements came after the Albanese government moved quickly to hold the recent Jobs and Skills Summit. The Jobs and Skills Summit brought together Australians including unions, employers, civil society and governments to address our shared economic challenges. As a result of the consensus reached at the summit, immediate actions will be taken to build a bigger, better-trained and more-productive workforce to help deliver secure jobs with growing wages, to boost incomes and living standards and to create more opportunities for more Australians. The summit has also laid out priorities for further work and further action.

In addition to the announcements in the budget, the Australian government will legislate Jobs and Skills Australia as a priority based on tripartite governance, establish the Jobs and Skills Australia work plan in consultation with all jurisdictions and stakeholders to address workforce shortages, and build long-term capacity in priority sectors. We'll task Jobs and Skills Australia, once established, to commission a workforce capacity study on the clean energy workforce. The Australian government and the states and territories will also kickstart skill sector reform and restart discussions for a five-year national skills agreement based on guiding principles agreed by the National Cabinet and skills ministers, and develop a comprehensive blueprint with key stakeholders to support and grow a quality VET workforce.

The Australian government, in partnership with states, territories and stakeholders, will also reinvigorate foundation skills programs to support workers and vulnerable Australians to gain secure employment choices; explore more options to improve the apprenticeship support system and drive up completions; include specific sub-targets for women in the Australian Skills Guarantee and ensure the guarantee includes a focus on the need for digital skills; and work together to reform the framework for VET qualifications and microcredentials to ensure they are most relevant to labour market needs.

In the lead-up to the Jobs and Skills Summit in Canberra, over 100 jobs and skills forums were held across Australia, including three in Tasmania. I attended the Hobart forum with my Labor colleagues the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury, Mr Leigh; the member for Lyons, Mr Brian Mitchell; and the good senator Carol Brown. It was a wonderful opportunity to hear firsthand from a wide variety of voices: businesses, civil society organisations, professional associations, employment service providers and unions. Everybody in the room was working together, not trying to kill off certain sectors, like the previous government did in trying to kill off the unions.

We heard that we have a vital need to provide skills and training, especially for our young Tasmanians. Career education must include skill based occupations such as trades, transport and logistics, and care based occupations. Further, training targeting occupations which ensure the next generation—those children, those students, up in the gallery—is job ready was a key focus. One concern is that Tasmania has a shortage of education professionals, which is impacting the education of Tasmania's young people right now. We had a lot of great ideas generated about how to tackle the skills crisis, make jobs secure and get wages moving, so I do quickly want to thank all those people who were present for their ideas and suggestions, and for participating in that activity.

Our current skills crisis has of course been exacerbated by COVID, but we saw signs of the looming shortage even before the pandemic hit. Whether in nursing, aged care, hospitality, construction, teaching or tech, there are skills shortages wherever we look across the economy. In my old area, early childhood education, there are skill shortages and a lack of people taking on the roles. The Skills Priority List released recently by the National Skills Commission includes 286 occupations in national shortage, up from 153 in 2021. Action should have been taken by the previous government on the shortages and the emerging shortages, but, of course, they dropped the ball in this area as in a range of other areas. But now we have a government that is willing to work with employers, education and training providers and the unions to find solutions.

According to the OECD, a staggering three million adults in Australia lack the fundamental skills required to participate in training and secure work. These are skills such as basic literacy, digital literacy and numeracy, which are required to participate in our economy and, frankly, in our society. The Albanese government will explore options to address this critical issue to make sure that no-one is held back and no-one is left behind.

As anyone who has listened to parliamentary debates well knows, I'm deeply passionate about TAFE. I came out of TAFE. A strong TAFE sector is crucial to a strong economy and achieving a fair society. We will restore TAFE to its rightful prominence in the training landscape, and it's crucial that we reinvigorate Australia's apprenticeship system and provide support for secure careers in trades and occupations that are in demand. We are engaging the sector to shift the focus to improving retention and completion rates and ensuring apprentices and trainees get the support they need. The Australian Skills Guarantee will ensure that one in 10 workers on major federally funded government projects is an apprentice, trainee or paid cadet, with a particular focus on supporting women through specific targets.

The new energy sector is one such area of focus, and we're providing for 10,000 new energy apprenticeships.

We must secure a more productive economy and help Australians get well paid and secure jobs, providing them with great opportunities. This requires leadership, planning, collaboration and working towards a shared goal if we are to be successful. At a time of low unemployment and labour shortage, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ensure that the people who face intergenerational barriers to employment can gain transferable skills and secure jobs. Labor is more than ready to grasp this opportunity.

Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

ULLIVAN (—) (): Diversity, inclusion and blind acceptance are subjects that are regularly preached by the woke left. Unfortunately, their awakening has led them into a place of hypocrisy. They are some of the most intolerant and least accepting members of our society.

The Australian Football League is now a place where a person can be vilified and all but forced out of a job. It has become a bloated multibillion-dollar goliath regularly moralising to Australians on social issues while addicted to gambling advertising and has left us all down. In less than 24 hours Mr Andrew Thorburn was hired and resigned from his position as CEO of the Essendon Bombers Football Club. Let's make this crystal clear. Mr Thorburn was admonished and publicly attacked, not for his personal but for the thoughts of someone else who delivered a sermon at his church a decade ago. He did not attend, nor was he aware of it until the woke mob called for his blood.

I had the opportunity to work alongside the NAB while Mr Thorburn was the CEO of the bank. I headed the Indigenous training and employment organisation, GenerationOne, when NAB signed up as one of our partners. Unlike some other corporates that merely talk the talk and maybe put up some artwork or other things, the NAB really stepped up and embraced this program to create real and meaningful employment opportunities for Indigenous Australians. It was clear to me, given the way they embraced this program, that the support came from the very top of the organisation.

So it saddens me to see Mr Thorburn reduced by his faith and by this measure found unfit to take on the role at the Essendon Football Club. Essendon Football Club claimed that this is not about vilifying anyone for their personal religious beliefs, but about 'a clear conflict of interest with an organisation whose views do not align at all with our values as a safe, inclusive, diverse and welcoming club'. This is just hypocrisy at its finest—safe, inclusive, diverse and welcoming, unless, of course, your personal beliefs differ from the reigning diversity culture.

I accept that things have moved on and our society and that there are many different views on issues of social matters. But this is a very, very alarming situation that we have here. Welcome to the new Australia, where people can be censored and publicly punished by their mere association. We are no longer the country of a fair go. This fact should be a wake-up call for all Australians. It affirms what Janet Albrechtsen said recently in her article in The Australian. She said:

Rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, so central to living in a free and liberal society, have been emasculated by social engineers who know exactly what they are doing and facilitated by knaves who should know better.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews rushed to attack Andrew Thorburn's association, which only highlights a further degree of hypocrisy. The Archbishop of Melbourne, Peter Comensoli, said:

The Premier's own words about his beliefs and how they play out for the sake of others, have tended toward the harmful, because they have sought to uphold the good of one by undermining the good of another.

Referring to Andrew Thorburn’s church and the Bombers’ decision to sack its new CEO, the Premier used words like ‘intolerant, ‘bigotry’, ‘absolutely appalling’, and ‘no sympathy’. Such language pitches some members of the community against others and contributes to an unhelpful spirit of division. It leaves ordinary people of faith questioning if they can publicly hold their committed beliefs, or even to be able to exercise leadership and service in the community.

Then he went on to say:

We cannot claim to be inclusive if we stir up polarisation between sectors of the community, because in our Nation and, I hope, our State, every person, and every community, matters.

This issue is precisely why the coalition pushed so hard to pass the Religious Discrimination Act while we were in government. Opponents that stood in the way of the Religious Discrimination Bill said that the bill was a solution looking for a problem. Well, if Thorburn's case doesn't reveal the dire problem, then nothing will. As far as we know, Mr Thorburn was not seeking to use his platform as CEO of the football club to enforce his pastor's views on social issues upon the football club. He was not measured by his own history and record; he was measured by his association and was asked to make a choice that no Australian should ever be forced to make, and that was a choice between his faith and his job.

The Prime Minister, Mr Albanese, has hidden from this issue. He has shown no leadership. Labor went to the election claiming that they will unite Australians, but when it comes to defending freedom of religion, they are nowhere to be seen. In an interview with ABC Radio in Perth, when asked if Mr Thorburn had been discriminated against by Essendon, all that the Prime Minister had to say was that that's not his focus at all. He has not been focused on that. Well, from time to time, you need your leaders to stand up and defend those that need defending. I call on the Prime Minister to step up and do more in this space. Faith leaders and religious communities are calling for religious protections. After Labor voted against the coalition's bill, they then made it an election promise. I welcome that, and I would like to see that forthcoming.

I have been a strong supporter of religious protections and accept there is this massive diversity of views and, of course, lots of different positions. We must protect the freedom of individuals to be able to hold those positions. Australians are concerned that their freedom of worship is slipping away. Mr Thorburn is proof of it, and he is not the only one. Jason Tey, a wedding photographer, was sued by a same-sex couple because he told them that he did not share the same views because he was a Christian. He didn't decline to photograph their wedding, but nonetheless he received a letter from the Western Australian Equal Opportunity Commission advising that a formal discrimination complaint was lodged.

On the other hand, Muslim AFLW player Haneen Zreika was celebrated for refusing to wear the pride guernsey and skipping the pride round. Then we saw the Manly Sea Eagles implode because seven players made the same decision as Haneen Zreika. She was applauded, but Manly was attacked into submission. There is just no consistency. I raise those examples to point out that there is just no consistency. It's just another display of the left-wing hypocrisy.

This is a clarion call to Australians of courage. It's time for Australians who aren't on board with woke extremism to stand up and fight back. It's time for an Australia where you aren't punished for holding fast to your beliefs, no matter how much the woke mob might bay for your blood.