Q&A at National Press Club, Canberra

JOURNALIST: Thanks Minister. Interested in this term, the ‘parity of esteem’, in terms of vocational training – that we're still not there. What do you put that down to? Is that primarily what young people are choosing or are they strongly influenced by parents that might think aiming highest is a degree at a university – law, whatever it might be, medicine?

ANDREW GILES, MINISTER FOR SKILLS AND TRAINING: I think it's all of the above. And I think it's also important to recognise that this is not an Australian phenomenon exclusively. Across the OECD, we're seeing a very similar mismatch between the sort of jobs young people are looking to do and what the labour markets are demanding. And I think there's a lot of cultural questions that underpin this around expectations and what we value as a society. So, I think when we're looking at turning this around, if we're looking to make sure that young Australians and older Australians too have good choices around their pathways to satisfying secure jobs and careers, there's a cultural element. But there's also a really important signalling responsibility for Government and indeed across the community.

JOURNALIST: I know you've got a 13-year-old you're worried might start going for St Kilda because she's Carlton now but her favourite player is Tom De Koning, so I know what advice you'll have for her on that. What about vocationally? What if she says to you, I'm really keen on going down the skills path? How much would you encourage her? Maybe you say, ‘hey, I did a law degree and I'm the Member for Scullin and I know Paul pretty well, he'll sort you out.’ What would your advice be?

GILES: Well I'm pretty confident that my example won't be what she'll be first looking to, as she thinks of her career. So, that is helpful in terms of, when I think about parity of esteem I'm not sure my household is really the way in which it can be best articulated –

JOURNALIST: Maybe the law degree though?

GILES: I think this is a really important question for those of us with kids, and mine are in teen years, to try and encourage them to have good conversations about matching the things that they are good at and the things that they are interested in with the sort of opportunities that are there for them. This is a really important conversation. It's something that we can do much better. It's not simply a question for the curriculum. It is a question for parents, parents like me, to try and build a better sense of matching those individual aspirations to where opportunity lies. 

As I say, there's a big responsibility for Government. When we think about the Universities Accord, I think this is a really important underpinning principle. It's why also tertiary harmonisation is absolutely critical, because I think this artificial barrier we've had that’s separated vocational education and training from higher education has held back so many people from making these choices. So, I think being able to think about maybe some of those high-level policy things – where we go with credit transfer, with qualification reform – these are technical pieces of work that maybe Carolyn will talk a bit about tomorrow, that are fundamental.

But they'll only meaningful if the conversations in the households, in the lunchrooms around Australia reflect, I guess, the parity of esteem. I think it's a really important concept. To not suggest that there is some sort of hierarchy from going to medicine at the top to something that's not an ATAR score at the other, I think that is a challenge that we've really got to grapple with as a society and in households like my own.

JOURNALIST: A bit of word association – just noting, you're in a safe space, you can be instinctive on this. AI.

GILES: It's an opportunity that we need to realise by making everyone a stakeholder in its adoption.

JOURNALIST: And to the extent someone could be a stakeholder, the unions, for example, want any business that proposes to use AI, come with that a job guarantee. Is that too high a bar, too restrictive?

GILES: One of the things I've been a bit frustrated about in the conversation that's played out about the role of Generative AI over the last couple of weeks is, I actually think there's not an enormous gap between the various positions that have been articulated. I think the report that JSA has done is a really useful guide for policy makers, and I guess for concerned community members as well. I think there is really broad agreement about getting the balance right between opportunities and some of the downside risks, particularly social licence. There are conversations which are complicated ones that need to play out as to how we get it right.

I look at what happened at the Economic Reform Roundtable in this space, and I actually think there was a direction of travel that reflected a reasonably broad consensus around those objectives. Getting there, obviously, there are further conversations to be had, which is unsurprising given the scale of the transformation that we can anticipate.

JOURNALIST: That's a pretty high bar, though. In reality, AI is already being used in a lot of places.

GILES: But I think, again, if you think about what the report tells us about its likely impact on tasks, on roles, and the opportunity to realise its benefits, particularly through a productivity lens, there's obviously a really critical role for the workers doing the tasks to think about how they can be doing them more productively –

JOURNALIST: Or different tasks?

GILES: Or different tasks. Well that –

JOURNALIST: In that situation, a job might go and another one might be created. Is that something you're comfortable with?

GILES: Well, that’s it. I think the frame is really about making sure that we are realising all the opportunities where augmentation is the role. And thinking about what that means for managers and workers is a really important set of questions.

JOURNALIST: And for the workers, mid-career training is going to be more and more important. Who needs to pay for that?

GILES: Well, there's got to be everyone, frankly. I mean, when we talk about foundational skills and lifelong learning I think, traditionally, if anyone is in this room or watching is thinking about foundational skills, they're thinking about traditional literacy and numeracy. I think that conversation has expanded to think about those soft skills that go to employability and working in teams, increasingly to digital skills in a general sense. I think we've got to think about engaging with AI as foundational. So in that, there is a role for government but there's also going to be a role for employers of course.

JOURNALIST: I mean, so Free TAFE is one thing, but the biggest cost for someone is not working while they're maybe 45 and they've got a mortgage. How do you tackle that problem?

GILES: Well again, one of the things that I'm really proud of is the way in which we've opened the door to Skills for Education and Employment to try and find ways, no cost to the user, to build a bit of a bridge between where that 45-year-old is and what –

JOURNALIST: Training on the job, is that the only way it can really happen?

GILES: I think there are possibly some things that might happen before the training on the job when it comes to gaps in terms of digital skills and perhaps AI skills, some other foundational skills. There's not going to be a one-size-fits-all, and that's one of the reasons why I really highlight a focus on lifelong learning as being absolutely fundamental to meeting our skills challenges.

JOURNALIST: Minister, thank you for your speech. In your speech, you said that you were willing to explore all options. I would like to mention a report by Jobs and Skills Australia last year in May 2024 called Apprenticeships: a missing pathway for international students. It had a number of recommendations including for a pilot program to be run by at least one state or territory. Now before I get to my actual question I just need to run you through some numbers. Peter Hurley, who is an academic at Victoria University, said between 2015 and 2024 there was an explosion in construction course enrolments, including a 2,000 per cent increase in Certificate III and IV building courses. And there was a 7,500 per cent increase in civil engineering diplomas. This is within, among international students. Under current rules, these people can't work as a tradie because they haven't done the work placement experience that is the essential part of the apprenticeship. But there is no doubt that the explosion in enrolments in these courses is because they're getting jobs on building sites. So, what is your explanation as to why international students can't in full apprenticeships? And can you address whether the reason is because the Labor Government is beholden to unions, including the CFMEU?

GILES: Well, I’ll answer the second part of your question, and that's a no. What I can say is that this question of, how do we better match – well, I'll take it a step back. The issues that you raise have been talked about for a long time, this concept of an international apprenticeship. People have struggled to articulate exactly what they mean by an international apprenticeship and to link it to the sort of visa options that are available to international students. Obviously, most students, most international students have to meet, they all have to meet the requirement of now the genuine student test, which does prevent a challenge in the structure of our visa system and how it relates to our work system. The principal purpose of someone coming here as an international student is obviously not to work, it’s to study. What we have sought to do since coming into government more broadly is to better align our migration, particularly, skilled migration and our domestic skilling through a range of measures, changes to the TSMIT being a very obvious one, the work across the Migration Strategy led by Minister O’Neil that I had a hand in, and of course the work that Minister O’Connor did that I’ve just touched upon.

As we look at the current debate about international education, there’s a really important question to be asked, particularly around VET, that will be informed by more recent work the JSA is doing about international student outcomes, to make sure that we have a principle based approach to this. Is there demand for, is there ongoing demand for people to come here, to gain skills in Australia to use them in the Australian labour market? Does the Australian Government see that as a critical pathway that’s consistent with our broader attitude to international education?

JOURNALIST: I’m still not entirely clear whether, I mean, we have a skills gap, we know there is a shortage of apprentices and a shortage of tradies, and we know that 50 per cent of apprentices drop out of domestic apprentices, but we have no way that an international student can enrol in a full apprenticeship –

GILES: I guess –

JOURNALIST: It doesn’t mean that we can’t change visa rules to allow that?

GILES: Well, I’m saying is that there are some broader questions for governments to consider around this. An apprentice necessarily is someone also who has some vulnerabilities in her or his experience in the workplace because they’re not simply dependent on their employer for a pay check; they’re dependent for the qualification as well. There is quite a large body of evidence about the vulnerability of international students in the workplace too. So there’s some really critical questions about getting the right fix in terms of a regulatory approach to this. As I say, this is a concept which has been discussed for quite some time. In terms of clearly articulating firstly exactly what an international apprenticeship would look like, and secondly what demand there really is for that as against perhaps some of the other issues that might lead to someone embarking upon a journey to Australia as an international student, the evidence is less clear. Similarly, the evidence is less clear on my read about the appetite for this in industry.

JOURNALIST: Could it be trialled though? I mean you say what does an international apprenticeship look like. Couldn’t it just be an international person doing an apprenticeship and a certain number of places?

GILES: Well, I’ll say it, I say it again, you say those words but what do they mean? What is the pathway into Australia for that person? What are the expectations in terms of the visa system which is obviously a really critical expression of our national interest, someone coming, having permission to come into Australia? What are the requirements on the employer? How would an employer source that person? How would we effectively regulate the training contract and what happens beyond the training contract? So again, I think this is another debate that we should have, but I think it should be located in the two principles that I see as coming from it. What purposes are served by international education and to what extent should engagement in the Australian labour market be part of the consideration when we look to international education? And then what is the appropriate regulatory overlay that would support an arrangement like this?

JOURNALIST: So are you seeking to answer all those questions?

GILES: Well, again, I’m more keen on making sure that on the one hand the systems for which I am responsible for – together with my state and territory colleagues I should say – the Australian domestic training system is working effectively to open up opportunities to Australians. That does not mean neglecting the questions that Julie has just raised but seeking to make clear that the proposition, which has been articulated from time to time is, in my view, no silver bullet to the challenges facing the Australian labour market.

JOURNALIST: Okay. And I don’t like putting things in people’s mouths, so to clarify; you’re not keen to go down that path? Is that a fair way to put it?

GILES: Well, I’m not persuaded that it is a fruitful path to go down.

JOURNALIST: Thanks very much, Minister. My question was about prior learning, particularly among migrants, and recognition of qualifications, overseas qualifications. There seems to be a broad acceptance that this is an issue. There's a lot of migrants in Australia who are working below their skill level and, like you say, could be contributing more to the economy. So if there's a broad recognition, I feel there hasn't been much progress in this area for quite a while, despite this broad recognition. What, where are the roadblocks? What's the resistance to doing more in this area? Do you need to be more ambitious in trying to push this issue a little bit further in terms of recognising overseas qualifications?

GILES: Yeah, thanks Patrick. Look, there's about six questions in that. I'll try and step through them, but I'll start with saying that as hopefully my speech made clear, we are concerned to make sure that everyone in Australia can effectively contribute for reasons of their own wellbeing and for reasons of the demands of our labour market. In doing that, I think we've got to be clear-eyed about what it is we're trying do and some of the roadblocks. One of them is I think we've got to be clear, I think there's two questions which I touch on very briefly in my remarks. There is the first one about someone who's coming here as a skilled migrant, generally employer-sponsored, to make sure that we are as efficient as possible at connecting them to the labour market. That's the offshore question. I think the work on that is quite well advanced.

The bigger question is this untapped resource which has been recently highlighted of people who are in Australia, perhaps who came from the humanitarian pathway, perhaps who may be the partner of a skilled migrant, or perhaps may be a skilled migrant who's had issues in the labour market. Some of those issues relate to skills recognition, not all of them do and I think we need to be clear about that. The question about recognition of prior learning is important though in two senses. One, I think it's clear that abuses of RPL have been at the absolute centre of a lot of the problems we've seen in undermining the integrity of our VET system. So making sure that those issues have been addressed is foundational and I'm really pleased at the work that Saxon Rice has led in ASQA, thanks to some of the decisions particularly that my predecessor, Brendan O'Connor, made in terms of legislative change and enforcement.

I'm also really hopeful that the work that we committed to at the election around Advanced Entry Trades Training will give us the confidence to look more broadly at how we can do recognition of prior learning in a way that maintains community confidence and social licence on the one hand, and a quicker pathway to working at level on the other. There are obviously some, there’s ongoing work more broadly about skills recognition. It's a really complicated piece of work with lots of stakeholders involved. That doesn't mean that we don't continue to work at it, but I think we've got to also recognise that it's a very diffuse area, and again, getting that balance right between maximising contribution on the one hand and maintaining community confidence and social licence on the other is a real tension point.

JOURNALIST: I just wanted to talk about the Economic Roundtable last week and the Treasurer saying following that there was a great appetite to work with the Jobs and Skills Councils. Obviously, that speed and getting the right skills into industry is paramount at the moment. Are there sort of timelines or further thinking about what that might look like? And a second question, I haven't heard much about micro-credentialing for a long time. Has that sort of dropped from view at a time where people with qualifications getting into industry is vital?

GILES: Well, I'll start with that one. No, I don't think it has. I think particularly in the context of tech and AI there's a lot of discussions about it. The place where Jason Clare, Amanda Rishworth and I held our forum to feed into the Economic Reform Roundtable was TAFE New South Wales Meadowbank campus. And that's a place that's delivered hundreds of thousands of micro-credentials and other skill sets in partnership principally with Microsoft, industry and some university partners, so that's something that's very much on my mind as we think about the lifelong learning approach. So again, if it was left out – I was hoping to speak for an hour so I didn't have any questions, but I was told by the Press Club that that's not the done thing – but it's not off the radar. I think the challenge though with the micro skills question is getting the balance right between the ability to contribute to the work of an employer and the sort of transferable skills we want to make sure our labour market is adaptive and productive as possible.

I guess on the other question is I'm super keen to see the JSCs play a bigger role. They're now organisations in a state of maturity that really allow us to boost the industry engagement. I think initially the focus was on the training packages. I think there's so much more we can get them to do. I was really excited that this was a feature of discussion at the Economic Reform Roundtable. As I touched on briefly, I think the career space is something where they can do a lot of work. And I was really pleased that there seems to be a really broad consensus about that in particular. I guess my answer on the skills piece that I think was implied in your question is sort of similar to my answer to Patrick's. We want these things done yesterday, but we want them done right. That's the tension. But I think they are now at a level of maturity if you look at some of the work that's being done, particularly the pilots in the tech space. I think we are seeing real progress. So I'm feeling pretty good about the evolution of the JSCs. I was really pleased to see that recognised last week.

JOURNALIST: I was going to congratulate you. You actually kept within three seconds of half an hour with your speech, which is really quite remarkable, particularly as Tom says for a politician. You also mentioned people with disability five times in your speech and I was wondering if you see TAFE as being a real opening, not just for people with disability, but for people who are outside the normal structure to get qualifications that they can then use to get into a job that leads to further qualifications, and keeps on going around in a virtuous circle. Do you think that that's the answer? And secondly, if that is the way you're going, is this sort of the Andrew Giles 1.0 speech and will we be seeing further speeches in your time as Minister as you elaborate further developments for the sector, not just at the TAFE level but also at the university and higher areas?

GILES: Okay. Answer to the first question, yes. As to further speeches, well, that's probably a matter for a combination of the National Press Club and my Chief of Staff, so we'll work that through. But I guess to give a less glib answer, the thing that animates my speech is a deep belief in the capacities of Australians and all of us. And a recognition then that the challenge for governments is to put in place the systems and send the broader signals that allow those talents to be realised. And I think what we are seeing, and the stats sort of suggest this, but it's the stories that I think go deeper than the stats, is that Free TAFE in particular has broken down barriers. Not just cost but other barriers that have held back Australians from gaining skills and qualifications that they may have wanted to for some time and obviously for Australians with disability we've got a large cohort with extraordinary capacity who have been much less active in the labour market than they wanted to be. Unlocking that has got to be a critical role of our skills and training architecture and of the Australian Government. So hopefully I'll get a chance to touch on that on another occasion.

JOURNALIST: When the NDIS was conceived, part of the concept was that people with a disability would work in much higher numbers and it would almost be neutral to the budget, which hasn't happened. Are you doing anything actively in that space?

GILES: Well, it's not just about the NDIS, of course. That's not as, obviously, everyone would gather from the recent conversation, that doesn't cover the field when we're talking about the experiences and the lives and working opportunities of people with disability. Again, I'll let that conversation play out. What I'm concerned to do broadly is to open more doors to more Australians to gain skills to be active in the labour market on those terms, and to remain active in the labour market and to recognise that this is a large group of Australians who historically we have not done well by.

JOURNALIST: So one of the things that you mentioned in your speech is the bringing together of or a closer relationship between TAFEs, vocational education and higher education. For those of us who've been around for a few years, we know that this has been spoken about endlessly since at least Denise Bradley released her report in 2010 and in fact during that kind of decade they became further and further apart. Now Barney knows I hate this phrase but tertiary harmonisation is just not going to get written into a newspaper story or on a media report anywhere. It's just really awful. So it seems to me there's a missing middle that just, how we bring those together.

Barney has talked about the technical colleges in South Australia which gives kids in Years 10 to 12 really hands-on experience in vocational areas. There's the Institutes of Advanced Technology in, there's I think five or three in New South Wales, but they're very expensive because they're something that was starting up from scratch, but they bring together universities, TAFEs and business. And then there is the University of South Australia experiment with higher degree apprenticeships. So, can we create harmonisation when the way forward seems to be rather ad hoc and piecemeal? Or do you have a grand strategy?

GILES: Well, I'm firstly very disappointed, Julie, that you don't think tertiary harmonisation is going to light up the front particularly of papers other than the Financial Review because that was really the basis upon which I agreed to deliver this speech. So we're kind of at a difficult point. I guess what I'd say is two things. One, I think the efforts which have been led by Jason around unlocking some of the technical questions, and we've put a fair bit of money into this already, is actually quite important. Finding ways to enable people to effectively jump between the pathways.

Again, it's not going to be on anyone's front page but it is important work. But maybe I'll be more substantive in my comments in agreeing with you that I think what we are seeing is a range of ways in which we'll use – I think this is the shared terminology here – a more joined up system of post school education is happening. It's happening through the relationships that are being formed at the TAFE Centres of Excellence. It's happening through some of the settings you've talked about. It's happening at TAFE New South Wales Meadowbank campus. It's happening in the seven dual sector universities and, I haven’t Jenny Dodd in the room, and in the various TAFEs that are dual sector as well. So, I think there's a combination of an iterative approach and a role, a shaping role for government and both limbs of the sector. And I think it's also about finding- to go back to your starting point, it's about finding a common language that actually resonates with Australians; including the 13-year-olds maybe that we should be talking to about what might lie ahead for them.

JOURNALIST: So there isn't a grand strategy?

GILES: Well, there is a grand strategy, but I don't think the grand strategy alone can be relied on delivering it. We have a process of tertiary harmonisation. That's the way we've had $27-odd million in the budget to work towards some of these initiatives to bring these things to fruition. But I don't think we should assume that can happen in isolation from both the organic actions that are bringing the two streams together and some of the more structured approaches, some of which I've just touched upon.

JOURNALIST: You mentioned during your speech that the number of apprenticeships being completed has dropped to about 100,000 now. Is there, I mean, do we think that's too low? Do we have an idea of how big the gap is, like how many people should be completing apprenticeships in any given year? Is there a target around this or is it just simply a sense that we need to be doing more?

GILES: Well, there certainly shouldn't be a target across the board because there's two elements to this. There's the numbers and then there's the apprenticeships that are being undertaken and how we better link them to jobs. I guess the critique that I would add to some of the comments I made about the former government was that the traineeships that were being undertaken had a very poor relationship to the jobs that were in a shortage. What we've been trying to do through the incentives that we have available is not only to get more people into these pathways, but to shape the pathways towards those areas of need and obviously we need somewhere between 32,000 and 42,000 electrical workers in the not too distant future. That's obviously one focus. All of the skills related to housing construction, another focus, and, obviously, there are a range of manufacturing obligations too. So there's two things, wanting more people to be looking at this pathway and then shaping the sorts of pathways to ensure that they are leading towards the gaps which currently exist in our labour market.

JOURNALIST: Might end on a theoretical kitchen table conversation. Perhaps it's a parent that watched your speech today in a break room or maybe even a student who was home from school. What would you hope their takeaway is if someone says, what did Andrew Giles have to say about skills and what job you should have in the future? What would the takeaway be? What would you hope it would be?

GILES: Well, I hope that someone watching this who is thinking about their future or their kids future would think that the Albanese Government’s on their side - that we recognise that we have a national responsibility to equip people for a world of work today and for a changing world of work into the future. And to give people the confidence to be thinking about what it is that they want to be doing and to know that there's a government that's on their side to back them to acquire the skills, to acquire the qualifications that will help them do it.

JOURNALIST: We'll see about 2.0. We do have a membership though, so you are welcome back here. Ladies and gentlemen, please thank the Minister.