Labor's skills platform in tatters: business community against Free TAFE

The Australian business community has called for legislation making Free TAFE permanent to be rejected by the Parliament and for Free TAFE to be overhauled. This means Labor’s key skills policy for the coming election does not have the support of Australian business.

The Hon Sussan Ley MP
Deputy Leader of The Opposition
Shadow Minister for Industry, Skills And Training
Shadow Minister for Small And Family Business
Shadow Minister for Women
Federal Member for Farrer

The Australian business community has called for legislation making Free TAFE permanent to be rejected by the Parliament and for Free TAFE to be overhauled. This means Labor’s key skills policy for the coming election does not have the support of Australian business.

Anthony Albanese has made Free TAFE the foundation of his election skills platform and daily claims it as a cost of living measure. He introduced the Free TAFE Bill 2024 into the Parliament to enshrine it in legislation.

The Business Council of Australia (BCA) submission to the Senate inquiry into the Free TAFE Bill 2024 states:

• The BCA “oppose(s) legislating Fee-Free TAFE as an enduring feature of the vocational education and training (VET) system” stating it should be rejected by the Parliament;
• “There is little available data to assess the effectiveness of the government's $1.5 billion Fee-Free TAFE program” to date; and
• “The BCA has heard from stakeholders in the VET sector that completion rates for Fee-Free places are around 20 per cent lower than the average VET completion rate of almost 50 per cent”.

The view from Australia’s business community is Free TAFE could be seeing completion rates of around 30 per cent. Official data shows completions are even lower at 13 per cent. 

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Minister for Skills and Training, Sussan Ley said Labor’s election skills platform is now in tatters, called on Labor to withdraw their Free TAFE legislation from the Parliament and come clean on the dropout rate of Free TAFE.

“The Australian business community has today come out against Labor’s Free TAFE election policy, these are the very stakeholders Anthony Albanese used to justify his approach to skills and workforce and this means today there is a big question mark over the entire Free TAFE program.

“Despite Labor spending over $1.5 billion on Free TAFE to date we have seen apprentice and trainees numbers drop by 80,000 and skills shortages have worsened. 

“Anthony Albanese and Andrew Giles are hiding the dropout rate of Free TAFE so they can push their legislation through the Parliament and that has been called out today. How can they propose to make Free TAFE permanent when they are hiding the most basic information about how effective it has been?” 

This follows the latest data released by the National Centre for Vocational Education and Research (NCVER) confirming Anthony Albanese has presided over a collapse in apprentices and trainees in every state and territory since taking office. The data shows Australia has lost over 80,365 apprentices and trainees from the national training pipeline since the Albanese Labor Government took office, a loss of almost one in five or 19 per cent.

Labor will go to the Federal Election having delivered:

• Fewer apprentices and trainees in-training – a loss of one in five;
• 34,685 fewer women apprentices and trainees in-training and a near halving of new starts for women in skills, or a loss of 44,605;
• Fewer Trade Apprentices in-training and a 25 per cent drop of new starts; and 
• Fewer Construction Trade Apprentices in-training and 26 per cent drop of new starts.

[ENDS]

Media contact: Deputy Leader’s Office - Liam Jones - 0431 000 583

Background
Trade apprentices in-training hit record highs in the final months of the Coalition Government and as of June 2022 there were 429,000 apprentices and trainees in-training and 277,900 commencements. The data shows apprentices and trainees in-training has dropped to just 348,635 in June 2024. Over the same period new training starts, or ‘commencements’, dropped to just 168,115 from 264,320 in 2022. Meaning there are 96,205 fewer apprentices and trainees starting a trade or a skill, or a drop of 36 per cent since Anthony Albanese took office.

The number of female apprentices and trainees in training has fallen by 34,685 or 27 per cent and female commencements have fallen by 44,605 or a massive 42 per cent.

Despite Labor promising to skill more construction workers, there are fewer Construction Trades Workers apprentices in training since they took office with numbers down 3,285 or 4 per cent and new starts have dropped by 8,305 or 26 per cent.

According to Jobs and Skills Australia, skills shortages have worsened since the Albanese Government took office and remain higher today than under the Coalition. Over Labor’s first year in office from June 2022 to June 2023 skills shortages increased by 12.5 per cent and the latest data indicates 33 per cent of all occupations are in shortage, which is higher than under the Coalition.

Table One: Numbers of apprentices and trainees in-training have collapsed in every state and territory (NCVER: Apprentices and trainees 2022: June quarter; Apprentices and trainees 2023 June quarter; Apprentices and trainees 2024: June quarter)