I am very pleased to be supporting the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill2022, which tackles an area that is holding our economy back. It's holding back businesses in my electorate of Macquarie,  in  the  Blue  Mountains  and  in  the  Hawkesbury.  Having  a  planned,  thought-through,  collaborative approach to jobs and skills and to how we make sure we're training people for the jobs of the present and future is crucial.

Before I go into the detail of it, I want to point out a theme that's been coming from those opposite. It's an ill-informed view that there have been no specific additional programs and funding attached to the policy and the legislation that we're doing. The member for Casey repeated this. I really urge the member for Casey not to take the talking points he's given but maybe do his own research so he can fact check.

One of the things that this agency is going to be tasked to do is to look at the future challenges that we have around a clean energy workforce. We have made an announcement that there will be $1.9 million of additional funding—you can shake your head as much as you like, Member for Casey—absolutely targeted by Jobs and Skills Australia to deepen the understanding of the workforce issues and provide foresight on what the future challenges are going to be. So I really encourage those opposite to check their facts before they stand up in this place and tell us what we have or haven't done.

What we're doing here is a game changer for employers and workers in my electorate and around the country. What is going to be different about it is that we're going to work collaboratively. I know that's a word not much understood on the other side. Had there been better collaboration, we may not have ended up with the urgency of this skills crisis that we currently face. In my roundtables in the lead-up to the Jobs and Skills Summit, every single employer talked about the challenges that they're facing in trying to find skilled people or even finding the training options to skill-up people. That's why on coming to government we have taken immediate action to do this. It was the very first piece of legislation we introduced. Here we are, only a couple of weeks into our parliamentary sittings, debating the detail of it now.

Jobs  and  Skills  Australia  will  be  an  independent  agency  and  it  will  be  responsible  for  providing  advice  to government  on  our  current,  emerging  and  future  labour  market  and  workforce  skills  and  the  training  needs that go with those skills. Here's where the collaboration comes in. It's working closely with state and territory governments, as well as industry, employers, unions and training providers, to ensure that there really is a shared understanding of what the key issues are. It's also tasked to look at the adequacy of the vocational educational system that we have in delivering those skills, making sure that training and job opportunities are available to all Australians, irrespective of their background.

We particularly noticed the gaps in a peri-urban community that I represent, where you can't study some of the things that are needed in our very community. Only just last year, a key course that goes to the heart of our equine community was removed from our TAFE system. You can no longer do basic safety training to work around horses. We have a racehorse industry. We have a dressage and equestrian industry. We have a polo sector. They all require people who are able to work very safely around these potentially lethal animals. We need to make sure that our vocational education system provides training in the places where the work is and where the workers are and complete that triangle.

This  is  the  first  of  a  two-stage  legislative  process.  The  second  part  of  the  legislation  will  require  detailed consultation.  We're  committed  to  doing  that,  working  across  state  and  territory  governments,  industries, employers, unions and training providers, to make sure that we get those details right. This is a terrific start. This is just the start of our commitment to ensuring that there are the training pathways and the trained workers that are needed. That's the outcome that we're looking for.

There  has  been  a  lot  of  focus  on  the  sorts  of  trades  that  this  will  support,  such  as  clean  energy  trades  and construction trades, and all the people we will need for them. I want to talk about another set of workers, and that  is  the  arts  workers  that  we  need.  There  are  the  technicians  that  we  need  to  work  in  our  theatres  with  all those technical skills. Things don't just appear on stage without a whole lot of technical stuff happening behind the scenes, from lighting to sound, equipment and things like safely moving sets in, let alone the construction of those sets.

What I keep hearing as Special Envoy for the Arts, travelling around the country to regional areas to consult around  our  National  Cultural  Policy,  is  that  the  arts  sector  cannot  get  the  workers  it  needs.  Given  how  many of them were treated during COVID and how hard it was for them to receive any government assistance, they left the sector. They had to eat, and they left the sector. Now there are severe shortages particularly in regional areas, although I know those shortages exist in more urban areas as well. For jobs and skills, I want to be clear: we’re talking about every sector where technical expertise and skills based expertise is needed. That is what our government’s objective is—to make sure we can train people up who are workers in every one of those sectors.

There are many things we need to do to set right what has happened in the last nearly 10 years. There are a range of commitments we've made—things that will shape how people interact with us when they're doing government tenders or projects that come under Commonwealth funding and the way we work with the states in terms of determining TAFE places. All those things will matter. Let me run through a few of the things that build off the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill that is the first step along the way. We have our Australian Skills Guarantee, which is about training thousands of workers by making sure that one in 10 workers on major federally funded government projects is an apprentice, trainee or cadet. We're going to look at how to include digital skills in that; this is something that came out of the Jobs and Skills Summit. We're also looking at targets for women so we can see some shift in those more traditionally male dominated sectors.

Another key objective we have that we'll be working on is around our fee-free TAFE places. The Jobs and Skills Summit, following the national cabinet meeting immediately prior to that, made the announcement of over $1billion of co-funded money for that national skills agreement. That will deliver 180,000 fee-free TAFE places next year. That's a really good start. It's particularly a good start when you think it's daunting for a lot of young people to even know what pathway they're going to take, and to be able to do it and know they're not carrying a huge debt right from the start can be a game changer.

On  some  of  the  other  plans  we  have:  one  mentioned  by  those  opposite,  with  a  lack  of  understanding,  is  the assurance we have given that at least 70 per cent of Commonwealth vocational education training funding will be for the public TAFE sector. Yesterday was National TAFE Day. We should be celebrating what is delivered in the public sector to students by incredible teachers in the TAFE system. It is right and proper that 70 per cent of Commonwealth funding goes there. That doesn't mean there isn't really good quality training happening in the  private  sector.  We  need  to  make  sure  that  what  is  delivered  in  both  sectors  is  to  the  standard  that  people deserve. That means it should be at an exceptionally high standard. A key area is obviously going to be around clean energy, which is why we've made a commitment of an additional $1.9 million to really understand what the needs are there. We will have new energy apprenticeships to encourage Australians to train in the new energy jobs of the future. There will be a new energy skills program in terms of developing for future pathways.

Something that sometimes gets left out is the foundation skills; TAFE teachers talk to me about these. It's all very well to put someone in a fee-free TAFE training course, but if they lack the literacy or numeracy skills or the digital literacy you're setting them up for failure. One of the outcomes of the summit was that the Commonwealth will work to redesign the foundation skills program, so we can make sure it best serves adult learners as well as  supports  vocational  education  providers  and  employers.  Without  those  skills,  it's  very  hard  to  get  through your course.

I want to finish by taking a couple of minutes to talk about an incredible local program that has been not just talking the talk but walking the walk in terms of getting young people into an apprenticeship or a training program, and that is the Inspiring the Future Australia program from the Schools Industry Partnership. I met with Adrian, Ian, Jennie and Vanessa last week in Springwood to find out how they had been working with students within the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury to inspire them to think about becoming apprentices. What they are really aware of is that you can't be what you can't see.

They have some fun ways of engaging with young people in schools. The one that they say has huge success is this: they get all the kids in the school and they get a bunch of employers who have quite diverse backgrounds, and they play a game called 'What's my line of work'. There might be eight people onstage; they've each got a number. The kids get to ask questions—they have to be yes/no questions. We've all played that sort of game. What that does is help the students to guess what occupations or industries the volunteers work in. It was held earlier this year at Springwood High School. I'm told the students' reactions were priceless when they uncovered what the professions were. The way they find out what the profession is that the professional or worker goes off into the wings and comes back with props or some of their costume. It's a way of getting students to think really widely about all the different roles and all the different training courses they can do.

Here are some of the occupations they were exposed to by this 'What's my line of work' game. One volunteer was a welder. One was a youth worker. One was a plumber. One was a childcare worker. Another was a beekeeper. There was an author, a horticulturalist, an allied health business owner and a landscape apprentice. There was a pilot and a correctional services officer. There were a vast range of things. For me, that's one of the things we also really need to work hard on: engaging with our young people in their school environment and supporting our careers advisers and teachers to do that.

The  Inspiring  the  Future  Australia  program,  which,  of  course,  is  run  on  the  smell  of  an  oily  rag,  is  doing  an incredible job encouraging young people. This year alone, they've been at a number of schools. At Colo High School, a former student, Jim Balchin, went back to the school as an industr