2022-10-26
I rise to speak on the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill 2022 and the Jobs and Skills Australia (National Skills Commissioner Repeal) Bill 2022. These bills will establish a new statutory body within the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations called Jobs and Skills Australia, establish an interim director to lead the body and abolish the National Skills Commissioner.
The Greens support this bill and have worked hard with the government to improve it. We secured amendments to ensure that Jobs and Skills Australia's functions include advising and opportunities to improve employment, vocational education and training, and higher education outcomes for marginalised cohorts, including First Nations people, people of colour and people with a disability. We've also secured amendments to ensure that Jobs and Skills Australia is required to advise on pathways into vocational education and training and pathways between vocational education and training and higher education. Importantly, we also worked to ensure that, in performing its functions, Jobs and Skills Australia consults more broadly, including with bodies representing First Nations people and migrants. These cohorts deserve a place at the table.
The Greens are proud to be the party of public education. Our support for TAFE is unwavering. TAFE should be free, fully funded and properly resourced, with staff who are paid properly, valued and respected for the incredible work that they do. Unfortunately, the coalition government gutted our TAFEs, as they gutted our public education and training system over the last nine years, to the detriment of TAFE staff, students and society more broadly. We need to recognise that the labour and skills shortage we're experiencing are the consequence of successive governments decimating TAFE and privatising a perfectly good system, making education and training a bidding war between public and private providers while removing essential funding from an already starving system.
For many years now, hardly a week has passed without reports of plummeting apprenticeship numbers or for-profit private providers rorting funding or ripping off students. At the election just gone, the Greens recommitted to free TAFE and university and added a fully costed policy to abolish all student debt. TAFE should be the priority for all federal funding for vocational education and training. There should be no government funding for providers that operate for private profit. Education is a public good, and it should never be for profit. Now is the time not just to rebuild our TAFEs but to unwind the crime of privatisation, to restore the adult migrant English program and to grow our education and training support for refugees and new migrants.
Working conditions are also in need of urgent improvement. During the sitting week a few weeks ago, I had the privilege of meeting with numerous TAFE teachers and staff on National TAFE Day. Secure long-term jobs for TAFE teachers and staff should be the norm, not the exception. There should be clear and measurable targets set for high rates of secure work, with fair conditions across the sector. We also need a wholesale review to examine the impact of privatisation; the contestable funding model on TAFEs, their staff and students; the affordability of that; and the range and quality of courses provided. Jobs and Skills Australia can do this work and they should do this work.
With these goals in mind, I'm looking forward to continuing our work with the Labor government. It's been a good few years since we've had a government that didn't treat TAFE as an afterthought at best. In fact, if you were to scrub through the former governments budgets and policy documents on VET, you would be hard pressed to find a mention of TAFE and the fine hardworking people who deliver high-quality public education and training to all.
I'm really pleased that we now have some common ground to build on, and I'm hopeful that we can work with the new government to bring back a strong public vocational education and training sector where teachers and students flourish. I believe that Jobs and Skills Australia can claim a role in that. I am also hopeful that we can work together with the Labor government to ensure Jobs and Skills Australia's permanent functions, structure and governance arrangements give adequate prioritisation to the central importance of TAFE.
I do understand that there are some amendments being moved during the committee stage. The Greens will be supporting the amendments circulated by Senator Cash, as they actually improve transparency and accountability. We will also support Senator David Pocock's amendments which are about expanding consultation to include universities, and his amendments on gender equality.