Mr TAYLOR (Hume) (12:38): I commend the member for Cunningham for her concern about apprenticeships. I think she is quite right to raise this as an important issue, a critical issue and one that all Australians should be concerned about, because the truth of the matter is that we know we have demand outstripping supply for many trade apprenticeships in particular and we know that this issue has been with us for some time and needs to be addressed. I will talk a little about some of the things the government is doing to address it.

The member for Cunningham talked about some research done by the NCVER. I think it is very good research. I have stayed across it for quite some time, because this is an issue of such importance to my electorate. I went back to a report that they published in 2014 to see what had happened over time in terms of apprenticeships. I was particularly interested in the first chart, figure 1, of the 2014 NCVER report on apprenticeships which looked at commencements.

I was astounded to see that, towards the end of 2007, apprenticeship commencements had reached about 22,000 a month; however, suddenly, just about the time that the Labor government got into power, they collapsed. By mid-2009, the number was closer to 17,000. So we saw very soon after Labor got into power a sharp reduction in the number of commencements—

An opposition member interjecting—

Mr TAYLOR: I will come back to that in a moment—so it is very clear that those opposite preach about this issue but understand very little about how to achieve it.

When we go to completion rates, we see a similarly sobering picture. I go to figure 2 of that very same report and we see that, between 2008 and 2012, those opposite did not manage to get completion rates above 50 per cent in any one year for trade apprentices. This was a disaster, and meanwhile they were preaching to every Australian that they needed to go to university. Let me tell you: the apprentices and the tradies in my electorate were insulted by your absolute obsession to focus on getting people to university. I went to university—I was very lucky to and I am delighted that I did go to university, but not every Australian needs to go to university to earn a good income and have a great job. Those opposite never understood this.

The data speaks for itself. What we find beneath the surface—they talk about cuts. Under Labor, they cut more than $1 billion from apprenticeships between the 2011-12 budget and the 2013 federal election—$1 billion in cuts, including millions of dollars in incentives taken out overnight on the eve of the 2013 election. This was their tactic: a billion dollars lost. We saw a collapse in apprenticeship completions, as I said; however, right towards the end of their time in government, the apprenticeship commencements collapsed again. This was directly as a result of their cuts in funding to this very important part of what goes on in all of our electorates.

Under the coalition we have seen $6 billion this year go to vocational educational training through funding to the states and territories to support their training systems and TAFE—$1.8 billion, up to 250,000 training places funded through the $664 million Industry Skills Funds; and student loans for VET students—$1.76 billion. These are massively important investments in our future and they are turning around a ship which those opposite came very, very close to completely sinking.

In my electorate, this is an all-important issue and I have a large number of tradies and apprentices. I was delighted that the Assistant Minister for Education and Training, Simon Birmingham, came to my electorate recently. He met with TAFE students, with Marty Burgess, the faculty director for trades and technology in Goulburn, and he saw the very good work that is going on by this government in my region. We are turning around a ship—a ship that was almost sunk by those opposite. This is a critical issue for Australia and my electorate.