PRESENTER:
Currently the Acting Prime Minister, Julia Gillard joins me from Melbourne. Julia Gillard, will you consider tax breaks, like abolishing payroll tax for apprentices, to encourage employers to invest in training young people?
JULIA GILLARD:
We already have a set of policies that will make a difference to skills shortages. We’ve committed to spending $2.5 billion on trades centres in schools. We want young people to have the opportunity to go into a trade, to understand what a trade is like, to get that experience in the school setting.
We also have committed to 450,000 new training places. That’s a huge number. And that’s a recognition that this nation has been left by the former government with a legacy of skills shortages. We need more training places. We need more people going into the trades. And between the policy of trades in schools and new training places generally, we will be addressing these skills shortages.
PRESENTER:
Of course, the problem that your government is facing is that those plans will take several years to have any impact and the crisis you’re facing is now.
JULIA GILLARD:
This crisis has been 11 years in the making. We’ve had a government in this country, the former Liberal government, that engaged in more than a decade of neglect. And yes, you can’t fix a decade of neglect overnight. Training takes time. We need to make sure that people get quality training. But we are getting on with the job immediately of getting our training structures right.
PRESENTER:
Do you need to…
JULIA GILLARD:
Of making sure that school kids, people who go to secondary schools, know that trades offer them a great opportunity. That they can get an experience in it and making sure that a training place is there for them.
PRESENTER:
Do you need to do more to convince workers contemplating early retirement to stay at work?
JULIA GILLARD:
We want to work with the people who are there in the trades today to try and get them to stay. Of course, part of having a fair industrial relations system is it does mean that people know they’re going to be treated decently in their workplaces. And that would weigh into peoples’ decisions about whether to stay at work, in the trades, in the work they’re doing now.
PRESENTER:
The Reserve Bank’s issued many warnings about what this situation is doing to the economy – slowing growth, constraining productivity. Just how serious an impact is it currently having on the economy, do you think?
JULIA GILLARD:
We’ve heard all those warnings from the Reserve Bank. Unfortunately, the former Liberal Government didn’t. Warning after warning came and went and no action was taken. We’ve heard those warnings. There’s no doubt that skills shortages are a capacity constraint on our economy currently. Skills shortages can put upwards pressure on inflation and interest rates. We want to make sure that our economy can grow in a non-inflationary way. Part of that is making sure we solve the skills problems. And also that we address the questions of infrastructure. Across the Rudd Labor Government, we’ve got big policies on skills, a big focus on infrastructure. And that is all about our economic prosperity for the long term.
PRESENTER:
Just finally, sad news about the passing of Sir Edmund Hillary today.
JULIA GILLARD:
Yes it is sad news. I think for many Australians they will be reflecting on Sir Edmund Hillary’s life today. Of course, his very name was synonymous with daring and achievement. With dreaming a dream and then getting it done. So people will be reflecting on Sir Edmund’s life, which was a long life and one very well lived.
PRESENTER:
Julia Gillard, thanks for joining us.
JULIA GILLARD:
Thank you very much.
ENDS