Economic Recovery Projects

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (14:45): My question is to the Minister for Innovation and Skills. Can the minister update the house on how the Marshall Liberal government is delivering economic recovery projects through skilled careers?

The Hon. D.G. PISONI (Unley—Minister for Innovation and Skills) (14:46): I thank the member for Colton for his excitement over this question. I think he knows how excited I am about the opportunities for skills and skills training here in South Australia and how excited I am that the federal government has boosted the apprenticeship commencements program nationwide, a program that was so successful that it was originally targeted over a 12-month period for 100,000 apprentices and trainees, yet it was fully subscribed after five months.

The extra good news that the Prime Minister announced when he announced the extension of this program is that all those apprenticeships that were signed up from October last year will now get a full 12 months of the 50 per cent subsidy. Any new apprenticeship that is signed up between now or the announcement and 30 June will get a subsidy for the full 12 months. In many instances that is the entire training period for trainees.

Those 12-month traineeships with individual support was one of the areas that we have been pioneering in South Australia, where for decades this feminised industry has relied on people learning in their own time and then working for free for up to eight weeks to get the work experience. We have been rolling out paid traineeships in that space, where people get paid to learn. We are going to be using this program not as a sugar hit but to change the culture in the workforce so that we professionalise training and improve training outcomes, particularly for women who haven't had the opportunity that many men have had to do paid training.

On top of that we've got the state-based GTO Boost, which has been extended until 30 June. For those people who may have been a bit concerned about taking on an apprentice for the first time, there's good news there too. Since we started the rollout of Skilling South Australia, 2,036 businesses have taken on apprentices for the first time. Can you imagine the traffic jam on the road to Damascus as these people realised after all this time that there was a benefit in training apprentices? They turned around and changed their attitude about apprentices and signed up to the government's apprenticeship program.

As to our Subsidised Training List, 800 courses are now subsidised by the Marshall government in comparison with just 350 that were on the Subsidised Training List when we came to office. This is a significant improvement for employers so that they have more options to get involved in apprentice training. Employers will also benefit from the 12-month payroll exemption if they choose to employ an apprentice directly.

If they employ them through a GTO, there is no payroll tax. If they choose to employ them directly and they make that commitment before 1 June, the wages of that apprentice will be exempt from the calculations of payroll tax. This is another incentive for employers to get behind the apprenticeship program and either take on an apprentice for the first time or get involved and expand their apprenticeship.

This is a very exciting time for apprentices, for the industry and for those who want to increase their skills level. We have learned from the MBA (Will Frogley was telling me) that there are over 2½ thousand more people working in the construction industry now than at the same time last year. This is an exciting time for apprentices and it has never been a better time to take on an apprentice or a trainee.