PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Mr BIRRELL (Nicholls) (13:21): I echo a lot of the comments that have been made—certainly those celebrating our TAFE teachers and the students who have enrolled in TAFE. Vocational education is critically important in our country. It should not be seen as second rate compared to a university education—though, in a lot of the rhetoric I hear, including in this place, sometimes it seems that way.

When assessing TAFE as a whole, though—vocational education in Australia and how we're faring with it—we really should be asking some very concise and clear questions. One of those questions is: when a student goes from a TAFE course into a workplace to start using the skills they have learnt in TAFE, what's the employer's view? What does the employer think of the level of competence and education that the TAFE student brings into the workplace?

I think that's a really important question to ask. My experience, when asking employers that question, is that it is very mixed. I think we can have a conversation in this country about making sure that we make TAFE—or whatever vocational education system we decide to have—the absolute best it can be in terms of quality of education.

I think what the Labor government likes to do is take what in some cases—not all cases, but some cases—can be a suboptimal system, make it free and say: 'Our cue's in the rack. We're done. Everyone can just enrol.

They don't have to pay anything. There's no FEE-HELP, and there's no deferred loan system. They can just enrol in it and do a course—or potentially not even complete a course—and we've done our bit for skills attainment in Australia.' But I don't think that's the case.

I think we can make TAFE and apprenticeships a lot better. I just wanted to mention the parlous state of apprenticeships in this country. I'm very worried about it, as are many of the business owners and people who are going to rely on the pipeline into the future.

When the coalition left office in 2022, there were 426,830 apprentices and trainees in training across the country. Today, that number is around 282,000. That is not good enough, and it doesn't bode well for us into the future.

I'd like to finish the time that I've got speaking about this important issue by sharing the experience I had as a result of receiving a Churchill Fellowship. I received it in late 2019 before I came into this place. Because the COVID pandemic hit, I wasn't able to travel through my Churchill Fellowship until I was in this place.

But I spent a number of weeks in the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and Finland looking at the way they approach encouraging young people to go from a high school environment, secondary school, into training and then into the workforce. What I found startling and incredibly impressive was the experience of Germany, which has a vocational education sector. Whilst it is funded by state governments, the curriculum is set up by the businesses themselves and the chambers of commerce.

I think that works really well, and all the German businesses told me that. In addition, the joint apprenticeship—vocational education school system was incredibly impressive in the way that it was complementing the theoretical education in vocational education with the practical. I'll give you an example of that.

I was in Stuttgart at Mercedes-Benz. Students who weren't following an academic pathway and were 17 or 18 years old would spend three days a week at a vocational education tech school. It is very high tech—a very high level—and I would argue it is probably better than what we've got here in TAFE in Australia.

Then they would spend the other two days of the week at Mercedes-Benz, imparting the knowledge that they had learnt. I think we should look at something like this in Australia. We should have industry and government and the education sector coming together and working a lot more closely to make sure that the education that young people get in the vocational system, in TAFE, is as beneficial to the workforce and the challenges they will have into the future.

The government like to pat themselves on the back with fee-free TAFE. I think we can make TAFE a lot better, and I think we can look overseas to examples of where that has happened. Our skills, requirements and future innovation depend on it.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Wilkie ): I understand the member for Pearce would like to present a copy of their speech for incorporation into Hansard in accordance with the resolution of the House agreed to on 6 November 2025.