Parliament resumed sitting this week and right away the noise level coming from the Opposition benches was high, with enough decibels generated to stop the Speaker of the House of Reps from hearing the reply from a minister having the floor during Question Time yesterday.
Still, no matter how boorish the Coalition pollies became, there was no stopping the Deputy-Prime Minister from dropping this little gem into Hansard concerning the Howard Government attempt to address the national skills shortage by training more manicurists.
Ms GILLARD—I thank the member for her question.
This nation does face a skills crisis which is adding
to inflationary pressures. We have been warned
about it, and the former government was warned about
it by the RBA on 20 occasions. I know that in this
place there are members opposite who simply do not
understand the dimensions of this crisis. I refer them to
the words of Suncorp Chairman and Tabcorp Director,
John Story, who is also the Chairman of the Australian
Institute of Company Directors, who delivered this
damning assessment of the former government's approach
to skills shortages:
We should have been addressing infrastructure issues. We
should have been addressing skills shortages five years ago. I
mean, we talked about it. These issues were discussed
around board tables like this for the past 10 years, and the
chickens are coming home to roost and there is no short-term
fix.
That is a message from business about the dimension
of skills shortages. Whilst business is delivering this
message, members opposite live in denial. We have
had the shadow minister for training saying that skills
shortages were 'just a matter of where we are in the
business cycle'—a denial that there is even a skills
crisis. And the shadow Treasurer has been quoted as
saying:
The truth is ... Australia does not have a chronic skills
shortage ...
This is the opposition in denial about their legacy and
in denial about a contemporary problem facing the
Australian community and its economy. Today's Grant
Thornton survey shows that 58 per cent of the businesses
surveyed identified skills shortages as the biggest
constraint to their growth. Whilst the former minister
for vocational education and training may not
have done much about it, at least he was prepared to
acknowledge that there was a skills crisis when he said:
We have got a problem with skills shortage. I mean, we
knew it was coming, but it has arrived with force and, you
know, it is only going to get worse.
How were these skills shortages created? If we look at
where the former government put investment in skills
development, we see some remarkable things. We saw
$3 million invested in the provision of training and
qualifications in nail technology. Mr Speaker, you
might well think to yourself: 'That's good. Hammering
nails into wood, building things—skills shortages in
the construction industry—$3 million into skills training
for nail technology.' You might be thinking that
that is a good thing. It is not those sorts of nails that we
are talking about. We are talking about fingernails. We
are talking about $3 million being invested in skills
training so that people can have manicures—a file and
paint; a set of acrylics. That is what the former government
invested in: $3 million in nail technology.
Mr Rudd—Really?
Ms GILLARD—Really, Prime Minister. I accept
that the Leader of the Opposition is a man of the world
and he probably understands the merit of a manicure.
He probably particularly understands the merit of a
manicure in a party room that is beset by claws that are
unsheathed and out. But I would ask the Leader of the
Opposition and those that sit on the opposition front
benches: when in government, how did they come to
the conclusion that with skills shortages besetting the
Australian economy the most important thing we
needed was 1,232 more Australians qualified to provide
manicures and 700 more Australians qualified to
apply make-up and cosmetics—a total cost of $3 million
for the manicures and $1.5 million for the makeup
and cosmetics? This was their investment in training.
Whilst the mining sector and the construction sector
were calling out for skilled workers, you might not
have been able to get a house built but you could always
go down to the beauty parlour and make yourself
feel better about it. That was their contribution to training
in this nation—hardly meeting the needs of working
families, who need the real skills shortages in this
economy fixed. I am not denigrating the occupations of
providing manicures and providing make-up services
—
Opposition members interjecting—
The SPEAKER—Order! The Deputy Prime Minister
has the call.
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