HumanAbility Forum

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I acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, the Traditional Owners of the land we’re meeting on.

I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining us.

I want to acknowledge the chair of HumanAbility’s board, Rob Bonner, and HumanAbility’s CEO, Emma King.

I also acknowledge and thank HumanAbility’s staff and leadership team for inviting me to speak today.

When the Australian Government announced the creation of Jobs and Skills Councils (JSCs) in December 2022, this was a major part of our plan to strengthen our skills sector.

We knew that if something was going to be done about the biggest skills shortage in 50 years, and the second most severe amongst developed economies, we needed to do something big.

As you know, one of those big things was to establish the JSCs, to provide industry with a stronger voice to ensure Australia’s vocational education and training sector delivers better outcomes for both learners and employers, now and into the future.

To work in a new way, bring together those most connected to their industries to bring forward informed and responsive plans for skills.

By bringing together employers and unions to work in partnership with governments and training providers to consider, develop and support responses to workforce challenges.

The industries HumanAbility represent are varied — aged care, disability support, early childhood education and care, health and human services, and sport and recreation.

But one thing brings all of this together: connection with people.

Most people in your industries don’t sit in offices.

They are out in communities helping and making a difference to the lives of others.

I can’t overstate the importance of your sectors.

Health care and social assistance, for example, which includes health care, and aged and disabled care workers, is the largest employing industry in Australia.

It accounts for 15 per cent of Australia’s workforce.

And it is forecast to grow faster than any other industry.

Care and support are essential services, fundamental to a good society.

Which is why the government is investing $103 billion across the care and support economy in 2024-5, including:

• $38 billion to make changes to aged care to support its vision for high-quality, person-centred care for older people.
• $49 billion to reform the National Disability Insurance Scheme to ensure its long-term sustainability.
• $50 billion to identify solutions for universal, affordable early childhood education and care.
• $999 million for veterans’ care to ensure access to high quality and timely services and supports.

All of these investments rely on a skilled and valued workforce.

The White Paper on Jobs and Opportunities was released in September 2023.

It identified a rising demand for quality care services as one of five significant transformations underway for Australia over the coming decade.

The paper also stressed the importance of planning for this sector to fill critical skill needs and build its future workforce.

We live in a time when there are increasing community expectations about the quality of care and support. And rightly so.

Australia needs a highly skilled labour force to meet the needs of Australians and our growing care economy.

This will increase demand for additional workers with the right skills in vocational and highly specialised roles.

In the face of some significant challenges:

• Workers experience wage penalties when compared to other occupations with similar characteristics in adjacent sectors.
• They face a lack of career pathways and opportunities for professional development.
• And workers are often not valued or recognised for the important work they do every day.

These factors combine to make workforce shortages even worse.

Not having enough workers is the predominant concern for providers across the care and support economy, and workforce shortages can threaten outcomes for individuals with care and support needs.

Workforce shortages also contribute to burnout of existing staff, who have limited time to provide sufficient care and support and leads to a lack of availability of services for those who need them.

Of course, I don’t need to tell you this. What I’m concerned with is rising to the challenge before us.

Governments and industry have a vital role in supporting workforce growth and development.

Which is why we have introduced initiatives like Fee-Free TAFE to remove financial barriers and get more people enrolled in courses where there are skill shortages.

Fee-Free TAFE has been hugely successful.

Last month, we announced Fee-Free TAFE had reached a milestone – with 500,000 Australians having enrolled in courses of high skills demand since the program started on January 1 last year.

And from January 1 to March 31 this year, there were over 38,300 Fee-Free TAFE enrolments in the care sector, and more than 12,600 in the early childhood sector.

A few weeks ago, I met a young woman on her third day studying to be an early childhood educator at Melbourne Polytechnic.

She had a tough time at school and things didn’t work out at university. She has made second start. Being fee-free, she can make sure she looks after herself while studying to get a job in one of the most important industries in the country – caring and educating our children.

We spoke about how VET better suits her accessibility needs and she brimmed with excitement about giving back in her new career.

To me, that’s the power of Fee-Free TAFE. Giving Australians the opportunity to skill up and have the training they need to work in jobs across the country.

Under the new 5-year National Skills Agreement (NSA), the Australian and state and territory governments have agreed to partner to increase investment to strengthen the VET system, with the Commonwealth investing $12.6 billion under the agreement.

This will involve a new model of coordinated and collaborative effort across all governments to address critical workforce shortages and deliver on agreed national priorities, including sustaining essential care services.

The NSA also provides funding for initiatives to strengthen our training system and improve outcomes for students, including supporting the growth of a quality VET workforce and removing barriers to students completing qualifications.

We’re also investing up to $325 million over 5 years, with matched funding from states and territories, to establish nationally networked TAFE Centres of Excellence.

The TAFE Centres of Excellence will strengthen the capability and capacity of the VET system to provide high-quality and responsive skills training for critical and emerging industries, including for sustaining essential care and support services.

To date, two Centres of Excellence have been announced for the care and support sectors, in recognition of the ongoing work to grow essential care services across Australia.

The Early Childhood Education and Care Centre of Excellence in South Australia will train early childhood education and care workers.

The Care and Support Centre of Excellence in Queensland will strengthen the aged care, disability support and mental health care sector.

TAFE Centres of Excellence are a great example of the Australian Government partnering with the states and territories to place TAFE at the heart of VET.

In addition, the Australian Government is providing $4.6 million through the TAFE Technology Fund to upgrade care and early childhood TAFE facilities in regional New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia.

This is only one part of the solution. And we’re continuing to work with the industry to find out what else is needed.

That’s why we commissioned Jobs and Skills Australia, working with HumanAbility, to undertake the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Capacity Study.

This is JSA’s second capacity study. It will report on the current state of the ECEC sector workforce, including demographic and geographic composition, occupation, skill level, job mobility, numbers of employers, job vacancies, sector pay and working conditions, traineeship numbers, and labour costs.

The study includes research into all aspects of the workforce pressures on ECEC professionals.

This has included analysis of the future demand of ECEC, taking into account policy commitments and the potential supply of the workforce over the next 10 years.

The release of Jobs and Skills Australia’s report is imminent. And we look forward to working with HumanAbility and other stakeholders to consider the study recommendations.

The work being undertaken by HumanAbility matters.

HumanAbility plays a key role in workforce planning and is taking action to ensure our skills system adapts to build the workforce we need and which supports workers as they progress over their careers.

The work that will be progressed by HumanAbility will be key to:

• providing leadership to address skills and workforce challenges for the care and support, health and broader community services sectors
• aligning effort across industries to improve VET system responsiveness, and
• driving high-quality outcomes for the VET sector, learners and business.

When we came to government in May 2022, we were faced with the most significant skills crisis in 50 years.

My predecessor, and friend, the Member for Gorton has made enormous progress in responding to this, I am focused on critical reforms to get care and support right in Australia, now and into the future.

We recognise that strategies to attract workers to one sector, risk worsening workforce shortages in other care and support sectors.

Solutions need to focus on growing the total care and support economy workforce, rather than exclusively focusing on one sector within it.

This is precisely why we established HumanAbility.

Because we want our response to skills shortages and workforce problems to be industry led, tripartite and collaborative.

We have done a lot already with workforce studies, the creation of skills councils, development of the National Skills Plan, and our investment in VET.

But we need to keep going.

We need to keep skilling up workers if we are going to get out of this skills crisis.

The people in this room – you – are the experts.

We need you and your experience, working with HumanAbility, to ensure that change happens.