Australia risks falling behind neighbouring Asian economies and becoming an "unskilled enclave" unless it prioritises local jobs and reduces the use of low-cost foreign workers, Bill Shorten has warned.
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In a speech to the National Press Club on Tuesday that underlines Mr Shorten's plan to win back voters who have deserted the ALP for populist, nationalist parties such as Pauline Hanson's One Nation and the Nick Xenophon Team, the Opposition Leader will say that Australian jobs will be his top economic priority in 2017.
It comes a day before Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull outlines his government's priorities for 2017 in a major speech at the National Press Club on Wednesday, and both men's speeches are intended to frame the political battlelines for the coming year.
Both leaders have stepped up their rhetoric about the importance of protecting and prioritising Australian jobs in recent months in response to the rise in support for One Nation and the Xenophon Team, concerns about job security in the community, and in the wake of Brexit and the election of President Donald Trump.
Mr Shorten will tell the National Press Club on Tuesday that, after promising in 2016 to crack down on abuses of the work visa system, Labor will focus on developing policies that improve skills, train locals and deliver more apprenticeships.
"Everybody loses when people are brought in from overseas and exploited. Good employers, Australian companies who do the right thing – can't compete with Third-World labour costs and conditions. Local people, looking for work, miss out on jobs they could be doing," he will say, according to speech extracts seen by Fairfax Media.
"Last year, the Immigration Minister issued over 10,400 visas for trade and technician jobs. Yet apprenticeships in these exact sectors are in decline. It's become too easy to import skills – rather than train our own people."
Nurses, carpenters, cooks, childcare workers, electricians and mechanics are among the professions affected by the importation of cheap labour.
"Too many work visas are being used as a low-cost substitute for employing an Australian – not to address a genuine shortage . . . we cannot allow our country to become an unskilled enclave in a modernising Asia."
The Labor leader also highlights $2.5 billion in funding that he says has been cut from skills and training budgets by the Coalition, a 128,000 drop in apprenticeships, regional youth unemployment rates that range from 15 to 25 per cent and vows the ALP "will not give up on these kids, or these communities".
To combat that drop in apprenticeships, in part, Mr Shorten will re-commit to an election promise that "one in every 10 jobs, on every single priority infrastructure project, to go to an Australian apprentice".
"Not every young Australian wants to study at university - and university isn't for everyone . . . but the Liberal-Nationals always treat VET as a second-class sector," he will say, adding that it is time to end pointless competition between universities and TAFEs, which should co-exist.
"Winning in Asia on our terms – as a high-skill, fair-wage nation – means putting vocational education back at the centre of our system. That starts with saving TAFE – and it finishes with the world's best National Training Agenda."
