Labor Party deputy leader Tanya Plibersek believes federal government budget cuts will hurt Wyndham families.
Ms Plibersek, who attended a post-budget forum with Lalor MP Joanne Ryan, community groups, health services and councils last week, said local organisations were still reeling from the cuts in last year’s budget and were “very worried” about the additional cuts in the 2015-16 budget.
Speaking from the science lab at Hoppers Crossing Secondary College last week, Ms Plibersek said the Labor Party was keen to build on the work started by the former federal Labor government with the Building Education Revolution program.
In particular, Labor is pledging to improve the skills of 25,000 teachers and waive the HECS/HELP debts of 100,000 science, technology, engineering and maths graduates to encourage more people to pursue careers in those fields.
“There are jobs that you can do today that nobody even knew were going to exist 10 years ago,” Ms Pilbersek said.
“We know that there will be jobs in 10 and 20 years’ time that haven’t been invented today.
“Those basic foundation skills that kids need to do those jobs involve computer literacy and science, technology and maths.”
Ms Plibersek was also concerned by the federal government’s plan to stop women from accessing both employer-sponsored and taxpayer-funded paid parental leave schemes.
Modelling done by the Greens reveals Lalor would be one of the 20 hardest-hit electorates in Australia if the plan goes ahead.
“This is a seat that has a very large number of young families, and young children,” Ms Plibersek said. “I think it’s an appalling thing for a government to call new mothers rorters, scammers and fraudsters.
“When they introduced the paid parental leave scheme, the 18 weeks at minimum wage was designed to be a minimum … we said explicitly at the time that we hoped employers would add to the scheme their own extra weeks of leave.
“The best employers have done that. There’s no way that those employers are going to keep paying those weeks of leave if all they’re doing is replacing what the government was going to pay.
“It’s completely unreasonable for the government to now say that they’re no longer entitled [to both] – it’s an effective pay cut.”
