Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has lauded fee-free TAFE uptake in Western Australia, but says the nation is competing globally to attract skilled talent to fill shortages in the immediate term.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has lauded fee-free TAFE uptake in Western Australia, but says the nation is competing globally to attract skilled talent to fill shortages in the immediate term.
Speaking following a tour of South Metropolitan TAFE’s Bentley Campus on his cabinet visit to Perth, Mr Albanese highlighted his government’s commitment to creating 300,000 additional fee-free TAFE places nationally next year as a means of filling the jobs of the future.
The distribution of places across the nation is still to be worked out, though WA’s uptake in 2023 under the original commitment has almost doubled original estimates of 18,800 places, already hitting 34,500 fee-free enrolments.
“We know we need to train Australians for the jobs of today, as well as the jobs of tomorrow,” Mr Albanese said.
“Fee-free TAFE will be a major part of that.”
However, the Prime Minister said there was significant work to be done to fix the skilled migration system and help bridge the immediate skills shortage gaps in WA – claiming his government inherited a visa backlog in the order of millions from its predecessor.
“You need to have a migration system that is working in the Australian national interest,” he said.
“That means one in which Australia is able to fill the areas of skill shortage and attract migrants to Australia in a global labour market, where there’s competition for skilled labour, in the areas that we need.”
Mr Albanese pointed to steps taken including changes to requirements for skilled migrants from New Zealand and efforts ongoing to recalibrate the national migration system.
“In addition to that, we’re working constructively with state and territory governments, and we will continue to do that,” he said.
The comments come amid rumours the state’s allocation of state-sponsored skilled migration intake would be cut significantly, with Premier Roger Cook writing to federal counterparts last week. Mr Albanese played the rumours down over the weekend.
After praising the federal commitment to training, WA Minister for Training Simone McGurk said the government was pleased to have its federal counterparts in Perth to express its concerns around workforce.
“It is also the case that we have skills demands right now, while we’re training local people, we do have the demand now,” she said.
“Nowhere is that more the case than in the construction of housing, which we know is a key enabler in the metropolitan area and in the regions, to get people in to fill the other jobs that we need done.
“So I really do also appreciate that the Prime Minister and his full Cabinet are here in Western Australia to listen to those concerns of West Australians, and businesses, Western Australian Government, who are saying ‘we need the skills now, and we want to make sure that our migration settings are appropriate to meet those skills demands right now.”
Ms McGurk said she briefly raised issues around the migration system with the Prime Minister – specifically the suitability of the nominated list approach to small and medium business – ahead of Premier Roger Cook’s scheduled appearance at a Federal Cabinet meeting this afternoon.
“We need that skilled labour now, and we also want to send consistent messages to our overseas markets that if people over there have skills, and they’re thinking about moving, they couldn’t think of a better place than Western Australia,” she said.
This afternoon’s cabinet meeting will be the second held by the Albanese government in Western Australia this year, following a landmark meeting in Port Hedland in February.
