A Dutton Coalition Government will back small business as the key driver of economic growth and security. We will be unashamedly pro small business, delivering reforms to help the small business sector grow and get back on track.
As announced in Peter Dutton’s Budget in Reply, if elected, we will invest over $500 million to back small and medium businesses and builders to skill the next generation of Australian workers with targeted and proven solutions.
We will provide small and medium businesses with $12,000 to support the wages of eligible new apprentices and trainees taking up training in areas of skills shortage for the first two years of their training. This is around 10 per cent of wage costs.
This will support around 40,000 new apprentices and trainees each year to take up training in critical skills areas.
Our plan will get Australian skills back on track. We will set a target to return the apprentice and trainee pipeline to over 400,000 again.
The Coalition will place particular emphasis on housing and construction trades through this incentive and will ensure all construction and housing trades are eligible through an updated Australian Apprenticeship Priority List.
This employer incentive will work alongside our commitment to deliver the Key Apprenticeship Program which will provide eligible apprentices between $5,000 and $10,000 directly over the life of their apprenticeship with a focus on supporting housing construction.
Since Labor took office training numbers have collapsed. Labor promised to deliver “more apprentices and more trainees” yet there are 90,000 fewer apprentices and trainees in training than when Anthony Albanese took office.
This has made it harder to build the homes we need and made skill shortages worse. Labor’s failures on skills have pushed up prices for essential goods and services and added to inflation.
Australia’s small businesses and builders just cannot afford three more years of Labor.
Our policy will back thousands of businesses to train the next generation and give a new generation of apprentices and trainees a hand up into well paid jobs for life. Only the Coalition has a plan to get Australia back on track.