Australian Public Policy Institute: Policymaker Summit Sydney

Acknowledgements omitted

I’d like to thank the Institute for extending the invitation to be with you today.

To talk about not only my work in the skills and training portfolio, but more broadly how that work fits into the wider story of what the Albanese Government is doing, where we seek to take Australia, and how we seek to go about it.

Since Anthony Albanese was elected Australia’s Prime Minister, our politics – and politics across advanced economies – has been buffeted by change and churn.

Angus Taylor is the third Leader of the Opposition he has faced across the dispatch box.

Of the state and territory leaders who held office when the Prime Minister was elected Labor leader, only Andrew Barr remains.

In the UK, within two years of achieving a near record majority, Keir Starmer was replaced by Andy Burnham.

Across much of the democratic world there is a growing paradox.

People have increasingly high expectations of government.

But, at the same time, trust in political institutions has declined.

Just at the moment when we need confidence in our systems to secure the supports and reforms citizens are calling for, cynicism and pessimism undermine them.

With living standards under pressure, housing unaffordability, technological disruption and growing geopolitical uncertainty, many people feel that change is occurring around them faster than they can keep up.

Or rather, that change is happening to them.

In ways they can’t escape or challenge.

It’s in this context that populists flourish through insisting both that the system is broken – and that those who run it want to keep it that way, for their own purposes, not the public good.

Undermining the very idea that we can come together to secure a fairer future.

This can’t be unchallenged – our task is to persuade Australians that decline isn’t inevitable.

Fundamentally, that the choices people make, can really make a difference.

As Minister for Skills and Training I have a significant role to play here.

Skills shortages affect us all – through exacerbating cost of living pressures, holding back the attainment of our national goals, from home-building to health care.

And access to skills is fundamental for all of us, too.

Australians need to be equipped to navigate with confidence a changing world, in particular a changing world of work, with the skills they want via relevant, flexible and accessible lifelong learning.

While ensuring that our nation has the skills pipeline we need to fulfill our collective aspirations.

Just as the pressures driving Australians to look to radical alternatives didn't appear overnight, nor can we appear glib in our response.

Structural challenges demand careful consideration, explanation and a structural response.

Delivering the national and personal resilience to secure a fairer future in volatile times also means committing to taking the time to get things right, not getting trapped in a cycle of reaction that risks breeding more cynicism and fuelling deeper grievances.

The defeat of the Morrison government came as Australia had sunk into the worst skills crisis seen in my lifetime.

Following policy-making neglect and administrative disinterest.

Compounded by cuts to TAFE and training, by tolerating rorts in private vocational education and training, by substituting temporary skilled migration for investment in domestic training and, fundamentally, by devaluing vocational pathways for Australians.

When challenges appeared, the responses were reactive, untargeted interventions like the BAC and CAC wage subsidy programs.

It’s probably unsurprising that I make these criticisms.

What’s more important though, than any individual failings, is the theme that draws these together.

No doubt, our labour market experienced great disruption over the term of the former government – especially through the pandemic.

But the response to this from the national government failed to meet the moment.

For nearly a decade, Australia didn’t have an agreement on skills bringing together the Commonwealth, states and territories in shared purpose.

We had a patchwork of skills programs and funding arrangements, but not a coherent national skills architecture.

We lacked the coordination needed to bring together workforce analysis, industry understanding and training policy – to skill Australians for the future.

What we didn’t have was a skills system.

This left Australians and Australian businesses exposed, lurching from shortage to shortage.

And that’s significant because, as I’ve suggested, we are at an inflection point.

Australians are asking more of government while remaining sceptical of its capabilities.

We need stronger and more responsive institutions.

Institutions capable of understanding change, planning for the future and delivering real outcomes for people.

Including the large majority of us who earn our living through selling our labour.

So building the architecture of a strong skills system was where we started.

The first legislation passed by the Albanese Labor Government was the bill that established Jobs and Skills Australia.

JSA is now a significant national institution, enabling governments, employers and the wider community to see our labour market as it really is – and, critically, as it is evolving.

So we can plan – as a nation, as businesses, as workers, as learners.

So we can define and explain the problems we are seeking to solve and build a shared understanding of where we’re going, and when we get there, too.

As a Government, it helps us distinguish between temporary pressures and structural challenges.

And it allows us to make considered choices about the workforce and economy we want to build.

In a fast-moving world and with an ever-changing world of work, the importance of this can’t be overstated.

If we can’t accurately define the challenges ahead, we can’t prepare Australians for them.

And if we can’t prepare for the future, we’re condemned to keep reacting to circumstances, not shaping our destiny.

Of course evidence alone doesn’t create solutions.

The second pillar of the skills system consists of ten Jobs and Skills Councils which bring together employers, unions and training providers to develop practical responses to the workforce challenges facing their industries.

If Jobs and Skills Australia answers the question, “What challenges are coming?” then the Jobs and Skills Councils answer, “What does industry need us to do about them?”.

Because the best workforce solutions aren’t imposed on industry, they’re built with industry.

Building trust and understanding too.

The final pillar of the skills system is the National Skills Agreement.

We are now three years into the landmark National Skills Agreement, and thinking about the next one.

The National Skills Agreement brings the Commonwealth, states and territories together around a shared set of priorities: building the workforce Australia needs for the future, and making sure all Australians can take their place in a labour market that works for them.

Through the Agreement, Australia’s governments – all of them – are recognised as joint stewards of our skills and training system.

This concept of stewardship is fundamental.

It’s about assuming shared responsibility for what has to be a shared enterprise.

Doing things differently, not just doing different things.

And it makes clear that our role is largely enabling – identifying goals, bringing together workplace parties to meet them, providing certainty beyond the short term that enables investments to be made with confidence.

Supporting decisions that are intentional rather than merely reactive, and so which can address the structural, and cultural, barriers that have led to long-term skills shortages, placed a drag on productivity growth, exacerbated cost of living pressures and denied too many Australians the chance to fulfil their potential at work.

The agreement also provides something that had been missing for too long: certainty.

It’s a framework, based on agreed principles, stretching beyond the short-term.

All of this is making a difference.

We now have a national skills system worthy of Australians. Built on evidence, partnership and enabling effective delivery.

While building these institutions has been a large focus of my work as the Minister for Skills and Training, the strength of a system is not measured by architecture alone.

It is measured by what Australians experience as a result.

My central contention is that people want government to solve complex problems but they need to see tangible evidence that government can deliver.

I’m mindful of how the British politician Michael Gove dismissed arguments in the Brexit referendum by saying that the public had ‘had enough’ of experts.

Government cannot be an abstract, alienated concept.

It must be visible in people’s lives and felt in positive, practical ways.

So that it provides a sense that something better is achievable, and that its institutions can be relied upon to deliver progress.

A future worth sharing in.

Nostalgia for an imagined past isn’t the sole preserve of reactionary populists.

Others also look to a golden age of reform, with purer intent but sometimes equally dangerously.

Because our challenges today can’t be solved by copying and pasting.

The past is a very different country, that’s why we did things differently then.

And why, in this age of disruption and declining trust, we can’t secure tomorrow by winding back the clock – however much the usual suspects tell us otherwise.

That’s a big part of why initiatives like Free TAFE matter.

Free TAFE has been a success.

It is a strong example of Commonwealth to state partnership and stewardship.

It’s broken down a huge barrier that held people back from accessing training and turned Australians towards those jobs that need doing.

Caring for older Australians, educating our youngest Australians, building a future that is made by Australians and building homes for Australians.

850,000 enrolments and counting.

Like Urgent Care Clinics, like Cheaper Home Batteries and like Paid Prac – it’s an example of government working for people, and seen to be working.

Right around the country, Free TAFE is a big part of the answer to a question Australians had been asking – of themselves and of government.

Breaking down a barrier that was holding people back from starting a career or moving into a new role.

Giving them a chance to navigate change on their terms, backed in by the Albanese Labor Government.

I touched earlier on what I describe as the central paradox of governing in this age of volatility: the mismatch between a lack of trust in our systems and a need for those systems to deliver real change.

Research by the Centre for Policy Development highlights this.

Australians’ trust in politics has been declining steadily over time, with a clear majority saying that representatives aren’t serving their interests.

A larger majority believe that our politics is too focused on the short term.

On the other hand, the survey respondents also make clear their deep commitment to the ‘fair go’, for taking preventative action rather than waiting for problems to become entrenched and 84 per cent believe that government should be hands-on in delivering the services people rely on.

What do I take from this?

Perhaps counter-intuitively, encouragement.

To keep going, to focus on building institutional capacity and to ensure this is directly linked to the experience of Australians who are navigating change.

And to bring people along with us.

This has to be a shared enterprise, not something imposed.

A resilient skills system requires long-term commitment from everyone.

Ultimately the success of skills reforms will depend not only on their inherent quality but on how Australians experience them.

Because even perfect policy can fail if people’s experience is poor.

If insufficient thought is given to policy implementation and administration.

This can be as important as policy design in terms of the effects of decision-making in the real world.

It also plays a critical role in building trust in our institutions.

The quality of our interactions with government often shape our attitudes to it.

Am I treated with respect or suspicion?

Is the process easy for me, or does it frustrate me?

Do I feel treated differently from others?

As a Minister, I see it as my responsibility not only to pursue good policy outcomes, but to ensure the systems and services I oversee are delivering on priorities that serve the national interest, and delivering services that meet the needs and expectations of Australians.

Treating people with the respect we are all entitled to from the – our – state.

Trust is built through institutions that work, and which are seen to work.

To serve the public good, and to make people’s lives better.

That is the point of the skills system, and of skills policy and administration.

Training someone to be able to do a job isn’t – or shouldn’t be – an end in itself.

We do this because we believe both that individuals should be supported to reach their potential and that our national priorities should be supported by skilled workers doing well paid, safe, secure work.

Understanding, and feeling, that we really are all in this together.

So we need to make use of the data, the experiences and the values we hold to better connect potential to contribution, to help shape a labour market that works for each of us, and all of us.

Recognising all the connections at play here.

That takes time.

So too does quality training.

It takes four years to become an electrician.

And we need to recognise that this is an area where short term thinking can carry long-term costs.

Many occupations have become permanent features of the temporary skills shortage lists.

Including electricians.

As my friend Michael Wright regularly reminds me – electrical workers have been in temporary shortage in Australia since 1981.

This isn’t solely about skills policy, of course.

But the point remains, if we always look for an immediate fix, it’s unlikely we can address structural issues.

Nor cultural ones.

Responding to the workplace implications of artificial intelligence highlights this.

A Pew Research Centre study from earlier this year found that of 37 countries surveyed, Australians are among the most worried about job losses due to AI.

76 per cent of Australians surveyed felt that artificial intelligence would lead to fewer jobs over the next 20 years – compared to 71 per cent in the United States, 61 per cent in the United Kingdom and 51 per cent in Germany.

This perception contrasts with the data we’re seeing – including from my own Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, which earlier this year found no definitive evidence of job loss caused by AI, and only modest slowing in employment growth in certain occupations that were considered highly exposed to AI.

If we are to navigate change with Australian workers we need to effectively connect what the data is telling us, with the understandable fears that are driving people’s concerns.

This is a profound example of the trust gap that we have to bridge if we are to deliver effective, evidence-based policies needed to navigate this age of volatility.

In which the forces transforming our economy are also disrupting and atomising our social relationships.

We build trust by building institutions that work – and which can be seen as working.

This isn’t – and can’t be – a technocratic question alone.

Especially when it comes to skills policy, which is so fundamental to the lives Australians get to live.

And we have to recognise that we are looking to make changes that are structural and cultural – that if we just search for the quick fix, we won’t solve the underlying problem.

Meaningful change takes time.

It takes time to explain why change is necessary in the first place.

To build public understanding.

To build confidence.

And to bring people with us.

We have to get the systems fit for purpose, sure – and demonstrate that they are serving those purposes, in terms that relate to our everyday lives.

In ways that offer hope.

As the Prime Minister has reflected on many occasions, whatever currents may buffet our course, we need to ensure that we stay focused and stay the course.

To deliver real change for Australia, and for Australians.

Including making sure we can all get the skills we want, to do the jobs that need doing.

Bringing together all of the work we’re doing – skilling up Australians, breaking down barriers, and ensuring our communities and our workplaces have the people they need to succeed.

Opening up doors that previously locked out too many.

To build a fairer, more prosperous future that we can all share in.