Interview with Tom Connell - SKY News Politics Now

TOM CONNELL, HOST: Popular with students, no doubt. What Labor said they'd do, yes, that as well. But how does it fit in with Labor talking about any spends from here should be all about productivity. I spoke to the Skills and Training Minister, Andrew Giles, a short time ago.

ANDREW GILES, MINISTER FOR SKILLS AND TRAINING: Look, it's really important that we've got to focus on immediate cost of living relief. And also, Tom, being true to our commitments to the Australian people, we said this was going to be the first piece of legislation. Australians voted for it, we are delivering it. It's absolutely vital, we've got big aspirations around the Universities Accord and certainly in my portfolio, boosting access to skills and training. That's going to be absolutely critical in maintaining the sort of productivity growth when it comes to labour productivity.

CONNELL: But forgiving debt that's already there doesn't help productivity, does it?

GILES: Well, we've got people carrying debt who are still students. I spoke to a number of students this morning, and I have done throughout the campaign too. It's about getting the incentive framework right –

CONNELL: So otherwise they might quit a degree or not continue?

GILES: Not continue, or be put off by existing debt from taking on another course. We've got to recognise that most people will be bouncing around the labour market, not one career for life.

CONNELL: The other part is though, when anyone's studying say a humanities degree, they've got a much bigger debt already locked in and these changes, or maybe the Coalition’s, but you haven't changed them, Labor hasn't changed them. So are you expecting them to say ‘well thanks for this cut in my debt but it's a lot bigger because my humanities degree's doubled in price?’

GILES: Well we're not doing this for thanks Tom, we're doing it because it's the right thing to do. The right thing to do in the short term to make a real impact today. Jason Clare's been really clear, this is not the be all and end all of our reform agenda when it comes to universities. We've just got the interim ATEC up and running which has got a critical role, including a productivity role when we think about the role of tertiary harmonisation, breaking down the barriers when it comes to qualifications being recognised. They've got work to do when it comes to fees as well.

CONNELL: So what about that? I mean the specific element was humanities degrees will be more expensive, will change how people study, and it didn't seem to work. Is it on Labor's to-do list to make humanities degrees more affordable again?

GILES: Well, I think there's two things to say there. I mean, there was never any evidence supporting the proposition. That was another example of the former government reflexively looking to ideology over evidence. And it didn't work. It spectacularly didn't work.

CONNELL: It's three years in and you haven't changed it.

GILES: What we're trying to do, as I say, in place of their evidence-allergic approach to policymaking, we're putting in place the Australian Tertiary Education Commission to look at these things and to give us proper guidance, to give us a basis of evidence.

CONNELL: So what will that mean? That if there's no evidence that's helping, then they drop in price?

GILES: Well, we are not in the business of getting ahead of the advice. This is a body that's been up and running as an interim body since the 1st of July. I think today is the 23rd.

CONNELL: Fee Free TAFE, is this basically forever now under Labor? You couldn't ever go from free to charging again? Because Jim Chalmers has said, budget's pretty tight. Is this going to survive, though?

GILES: I'm very confident it is. It was the second last law passed in the last Parliament. We've seen extraordinary uptake. 650,000 odd enrolments, 170,000 completions already. It's only been up and running since 2023. Importantly, this is something that's about working with the states to make available, at no cost, courses that lead to good job outcomes, in construction, in ECEC, in individual support. It's not at large and it's making a real difference. If you cast your mind back to 2019, the Productivity Commission identified cost as a real barrier to us getting the VET skill base we needed. The former government let that sit on the shelf; we've acted.

CONNELL: In the numbers though, are they not quite similar to pre-Covid? So yes they went up, but off a low base. Have they actually increased compared to Covid?

GILES: We're picking up, and critically we're picking up in the areas where we know we need the skills. For example, we put an extra 20,000 places on, fully funded by the Commonwealth, when it comes to housing construction. So we are looking not just at the aggregate numbers but we're also looking at –

CONNELL: But we hear a lot about aggregate, which you mentioned earlier, that's a comparable figure to pre-Covid isn't it, but with a much bigger spend.

GILES: We're seeing the dividends, we're seeing people get qualifications in areas where we desperately need them. When we came into Government, Tom, we had the worst skills shortage in 50 years. And on an international comparison basis, the second worst across the OECD.

CONNELL: But you're spending billions now just to get us back to where we were pre-Covid, essentially.

GILES: To get us ahead of where we were pre-Covid, but we start from where we started from, which was not a good position. If you think about the waste of BAC and CAC, $3 billion that was ripped from TAFE and training under the former government.

CONNELL: If we don't get to that housing level, if it becomes clear we're missing that target, do you think Australia should be open to, or the Government would be open to more immigrants coming in? Because you've done everything you can to get the skills here in Australia. You don't even pay for your training. If that's not getting enough in, is that the next logical move?

GILES: Well, let me be really clear, we're shooting for that target. We are ambitious. This is a real focus of the Government –

CONNELL: You have to check in as you're going, right?

GILES: Well, that's true, but I also want to be really clear that we are ambitious because we need to be ambitious, because Australians expect us to be ambitious. The Minister for Housing in Question Time today remarked that, I think, all of the Labor first speeches talked about housing as one of the issues that really resonated with the people who sent them to this place. The skills piece is a big part of that.

CONNELL: Very much becoming generational. Got to leave it there, Andrew Giles. Thanks for your time today.

GILES: Thanks, Tom.