E&OE TRANSCRIPT
PRESS CONFERENCE
BRISBANE
THURSDAY, 16 JULY 2020
 
SUBJECTS: Skills and training; JobKeeper; Budget update; Jobs.
 
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER:There's a fair bit to get through this morning so bear with me as I deal with the Prime Minister's skills announcement, some issues around JobKeeper and the budget update, and I'm also conscious that the unemployment numbers will come out later this morning, as well.
 
The Liberals and Nationals have an appalling record when it comes to TAFE and training. $3 billion in cuts, 140,000 trainees and apprentices lost, and widespread skill shortages right across the economy. We've been saying for some years that that's been a problem in our economy and that problem has obviously been exacerbated in the last few months.
 
Throughout this recession, we've been calling on Scott Morrison to act to save tradies in our economy. Australia has been losing thousands of apprentices while Scott Morrison has sat on his hands. 
 
We'll have a look at what the Government is proposing today. If it genuinely acts to support apprentices and to keep people in jobs, we'll support it. But I think there'll be a lot of scepticism and a lot of concern in the community that this is just another marketing slogan which falls over in the detail, in the delay, and in the damage already done by seven years of cuts to TAFE, training and apprentices under the life of this Coalition Government.

We do need a plan for apprentices and for training, but equally we made a plan to save jobs during the recession and create jobs in its aftermath, so that we're actually training people for jobs and opportunities which are available to them. That plan has been absent for some time under this Government.
 
The unemployment numbers and the broader labour force data will be released later today. My colleague Brendan O'Connor will be responding to that in detail but a couple of things are already clear; this virus hasn't just created from scratch an underemployment or insecurity issue in our economy, it has dramatically accelerated those challenges. Without a plan to save more jobs in the recession, or to create new jobs in its aftermath, this will be a jobless recovery. Australians cannot afford for this to be a jobless recovery from this recession. Australians can't afford more bungles when it comes to the JobKeeper program in particular, which would be incredibly costly for workers, businesses, and communities more broadly as well. 
 
The biggest test of this Government's management of the recession and its aftermath will be what happens to jobs. Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have said all along that the whole point of the JobKeeper program is to keep people attached to work. Morrison and Frydenberg will fail their own tests if unemployment stays too high for too long.
 
The Reserve Bank, Deloitte Access Economics and others have all pointed out that unemployment will be higher for longer without the right kind of Government support in the economy for longer as well. Having spent hundreds of billions of dollars, the only outcome from that cannot be to shift the main part of the problem from April to October.

We need to make sure that there is a sensible plan in place for the future of the JobKeeper program. JobKeeper was introduced too slowly and too narrowly, that's very clear now. It can't be withdrawn too quickly or too bluntly, that will do a lot of damage to the economy, to businesses, and to Australian workers.

The cliff that Australian workers are headed for in September is a creation of the Government and can only be fixed by the Government. The key is to ensure that any changes to JobKeeper are responsive to changes in the economy itself. A hard snap back of JobKeeper at the end of September was based on what the Prime Minister said repeatedly, that the economy would come back to normal around that time. That is clearly not the case now. We need to see JobKeeper responsive to that fact. The Government should be considering better ways to transition the JobKeeper program and they should be considering other labour market programs which recognise that the economy will be weaker for longer, and that that has consequences for jobs. 
 
We'll know more about the Government's expectations for the economy when they release the budget update at this time next week. The budget update needs to be a full, frank, and comprehensive assessment of the economy, not just another marketing exercise. We don't want to just see two years of forecasts, we want to see a full budget update. We want to see a full budget update, not half of a budget update.

This Government owes it to Australian workers, businesses, and communities to come clean on what they expect to happen in the economy over the next four years. People have a right to know how bad the Government thinks this recession will get, how much debt will be piled up throughout this process, and how long unemployment will be unacceptably high. Morrison and Frydenberg have already delayed the release of this budget update twice and that has only added to the uncertainty and the anxiety that workers, businesses and communities feel. We need to see the numbers so that we can work out what can be responsibly done to save jobs during the recession, but also to create jobs in its aftermath so that this isn't a jobless recovery. 
 
We don't want people left behind in this recession. We want people to get ahead in the recovery. We desperately need the Government to do a much better job of managing the economy during this recession and its aftermath than they did in the lead up to this first recession in almost three decades.
 
JOURNALIST: Do you think the JobTrainer program will help offset future job losses?
 
CHALMERS: That's the test of the skills package that the Prime Minister is announcing today. If it genuinely supports apprentices, and genuinely keeps people in jobs, then Labor will obviously welcome and support it. The point that we're making is that a lot of Australians will be skeptical. They hear the slogans, they hear the marketing, they see the announcements regularly come from the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, but so frequently these big announcements are followed by some kind of nasty detail, some kind of delay in the implementation, and it rarely makes up for the damage that's already been done to the economy by seven years of cuts to TAFE and training, widespread skill shortages and the fact that we have 140,000 fewer apprentices than we should have.
 
What we need to hear from the Prime Minister today is, does this make up for the damage that he's already done to the system? This problem was created by cuts to TAFE and training and the fact that we haven't done enough as a country in the last seven years to better teach and train our people. That has consequences for the economy and has had consequences in recent years, and not just in recent months. The Prime Minister has been sitting on his hands when it comes to skills and training. We've been urging him to act to save tradies' jobs, to genuinely support apprentices. He hasn't done so until now. It remains to be seen whether what he's announcing today is just another marketing exercise, or whether it's something that will genuinely do the right thing for a part of our economy and a part of our community which has been badly let down for too long.
 
JOURNALIST: On the JobTrainer package, the Government is yet to outline what sectors it will target. Where you believe the jobs of the future will be?
 
CHALMERS: Clearly there are two tasks for the Government when they're thinking about their policies on jobs. The first one is to save as many jobs, as many apprentices, as many tradies as they can in the depths of this first recession in three decades. The other task clearly is to have a plan to create good new jobs into the future. One of the issues in the training system for too long now is that it hasn't been sufficiently responsive to where the shortages are. We have had widespread skills shortages. Clearly into the future we will have a big need for services jobs. Clearly we'll still need jobs in areas of traditional strength, whether it be tourism, education, mining, and the like. The Government needs to have a carefully calibrated plan for those jobs but we haven't seen one. He's playing catch up today having done so much damage to the training system for so long, having sat on his hands for months during this recession as Labor has urged him to act on behalf of apprentices and trainees. All of that planning has been absent and that's been costly. It was costly before this recession, but it's been especially costly during it.
 
JOURNALIST: Does Labor support a new VET funding mode, insuring funding is directed to skill sectors in demand?
 
CHALMERS: We need to make sure that our skill system is responsive to where the jobs and the opportunities are. It's important that we invest in skills, important that we invest in TAFE, training and apprentices. It's equally important that there are opportunities there for people to grasp. If the Government continues to make a hash of JobKeeper during the recession and continues to fail to have a plan for good new jobs into the future, then clearly we'll be selling people short. We need a responsive training system, that's well-resourced, and well-planned, and those things have been absent now for too long.
 
JOURNALIST: On the expansion of the apprentices and trainee wage subsidy, does it go far enough, and if not what would you like to see?
 
CHALMERS: It remains to be seen. We will get a big announcement from the Prime Minister and that will be accompanied by all the usual slogans, the usual fanfare, and all the pats on the back for the Prime Minister and his colleagues. But it remains to be seen whether it will work. It remains to be seen whether it's enough. It remains to be seen whether all the States and Territories have signed up to it. It remains to be seen whether it will make up for the damage done by those cuts over the last seven years to TAFE and training. There are a lot of unanswered questions. The Prime Minister will ideally answer some of those when he stands up either today. But the issue is this; for too long now there's been too much damage done to the TAFE and training system. We've been saying for some time the Prime Minister needs to act on behalf of apprentices and tradies in particular. Australia has been losing thousands of apprentices while Scott Morrison sat on his hands. We need to see some action here. We will go through the detail of what's being proposed. No doubt some of these issues will need to be clarified by the Prime Minister when he stands up later today.
 
Thanks very much.
 
ENDS