Ms MURPHY (Dunkley) (11:16): Education is the foundation of opportunity for people and for communities and the basis of national progress. People in my community want to be active citizens and confident, capable, creative learners who can shape their personal future, our community's future and our country's future. Education is more than schools and universities, as fundamentally important as they are. It's also skills and vocational training. It's about degrees and it's about apprenticeships, diplomas and certificate qualifications. Recently I attended a joyous—it's the only word to describe it—Chisholm TAFE graduation in Frankston. What I saw was pride, ambition and hope for the future. In my community Chisholm TAFE holds a very special place, and so too do the Trade Training Centres, established with funding from the Gillard Labor government. We're also benefitting from the massive investment of the Andrews state Labor government in the game-changing Chisholm TAFE redevelopment—with not a single cent of federal funding—and funding for free TAFE places. This investment is happening without any support from the Liberal federal government. Our community remembers well the impact of previous cuts to TAFE by Liberal governments at both the state and the federal level. Across Australia, our VET system is not working. It's not working for students, for communities, for business or for the nation. In particular, it's not working for the people who are at most risk of being left behind, and there are too many of those in Dunkley. A civilised, wealthy country should leave no-one behind. It's not just the failure of the Morrison government to invest in TAFE and the vocational educational training sector that is short-changing my community; it's a failure of policy imagination, which our country will rue for generations. It's this government's failure—for six years now, and with no sign of change—to plan for and address the changing nature of work and working life. We know that technology and new business models are changing what is done at work, and the way it's done. And we know that our society has also been changing. Women's participation has been increasing continuously since the seventies. Many older workers are now choosing to work for longer—or, sadly, being forced to in order to survive financially. Young people are finding themselves with fewer employment options because of the loss of manufacturing industries, automation replacing entry-level jobs, and the crisis in our skills and vocational training system. Funding cuts and flawed ideology have had deep ramifications, and this is compounded by the total refusal of this Liberal government to recognise that we have a problem, let alone to develop a plan for the future of work. Across the world governments have concentrated their focus on setting up future-of-work commissions and on implementing industry, workplace-relations and social-security policies designed to deliver a future of inclusive economic growth—a future which is less unequal, not more. In Australia, a wide range of groups, including the ACTU, Monash University, the CSIRO and even the Business Council of Australia, have contributed to the debate about the future of work. Last parliamentary term, Labor set up the Senate inquiry into the future of work and workers, but what is this Liberal government doing about this fundamental policy challenge? Nothing. My community is made up of people who want to have a go, but they're being let down by this government's failure to support a decent skills sector and a policy—any policy—that would lead to good, secure and well-paid jobs. It's felt deeply by young people trying to enter the workforce, and it also negatively impacts on older workers. Our skills policies in Australia are not set up for a world in which people will have to retrain multiple times over their lifetime and where they will have to become continuous learners. The BCA has been a constructive contributor to this debate, which is a pleasant change, developing good ideas such as lifelong learning entitlements. But, if the BCA want to participate in this debate, they themselves also need to talk about business investment in training for workers. This Liberal government has to stand up and invest in skills and training and so does our business community. Investing in skills generates shared benefits. A skilled workforce benefits people and families, businesses are more productive, innovative and profitable, and it makes our economy and society stronger. As it generates shared benefits, it's a shared responsibility. It needs shared contributions from business and from government. The failure to prepare for the future of work is a failure of national policy imagination. We are a great country. We have capable, confident and creative people driving economic and social transformation. We need a government that will back them in. We don't need free market ideology, cuts to TAFE and a void where skills and future work policy is supposed to be. The time for rhetoric is over. The time to invest in our future is now.