Ms BYRNES (Cunningham) (12:01): This budget is focused on helping Australians find secure work, stay in work and build better futures. Labor has always been the party of the worker and we fight hard to deliver fair wages and conditions. We've delivered pay rises to almost 2.7 million of our lowest-paid workers, with yesterday's decision by the Fair Work Commission bringing the minimum wage above $1,000 a week for the very first time. This means that these workers are now more than $12,000 better off every year, thanks to Labor. We've backed pay rises for aged-care and early childhood workers, and our same job, same pay reforms have benefited more than 8,000 people. We've enshrined penalty rates into law and we've ensured more Australian workers are now covered by an award.

When it comes to skills, we've seen nearly 300,000 students enrol in free TAFE courses in New South Wales alone, putting them on the path to jobs in nursing, aged care, early childhood, construction and more, and saving them thousands of dollars. Our Key Apprenticeship Program is delivering the tradies that we need now in housing, construction and energy by supporting apprentices with $10,000 incentive payments and supporting their employers with $5,000. As of 30 April this year, nearly 26,000 people have started housing and construction apprenticeships, and more than 24,000 have started new energy apprenticeships. The National Centre for Vocational Education Research's recent report shows that 95 per cent of people who complete trade apprenticeships will move into work in these sectors. We know it works and we're focusing on the industries we need the most.

In my electorate, we've delivered the $2.5 million renewable energy training centre at Wollongong TAFE, bringing renewable energy, education and career engagement programs directly to local students. This is a collaboration with the University of Wollongong through the Energy Futures Skills Centre, another amazing centre that we have invested $10 million in to create the clean energy workforce of the future. The $47 million Illawarra Heavy Industry Manufacturing Centre of Excellence has been jointly funded by the Australian and New South Wales governments. Again located at Wollongong TAFE, this centre will target training in traditional and renewable heavy industry manufacturing for the defence and transport sectors. It will also equip students to work in digital, electrical and robotic manufacturing and deliver microskills and microcredentials to upskill our current workers.

Our 2026-27 budget continues to deliver that strong backing to employment and workplace relations. We're working to strengthen our employment services system through once-in-a-generation reforms by overhauling Workforce Australia's 'one size fits all' approach, put in place under the former government, and this is very welcome news in the regions. We're so very lucky in the Illawarra to have an experienced and passionate employment sector that is really working hard to support local people into meaningful work and delivering great outcomes. The Illawarra South Coast Local Jobs and Skills Taskforce, led by local jobs coordinator Andrew Wales, comprises industry leaders, businesses and community representatives who are regularly looking at ways we can better support both businesses and workers, because it's not just workers who are losing out under this system; it's also the businesses, who aren't being linked with the right with workers and with the right skills. Instead, they are being flooded with thousands of applications from jobseekers that they simply cannot assess. Andrew's local jobs program has a range of amazing initiatives to create opportunities for both workers and employers.

MTC FutureReady is another local employment service in Wollongong delivering free courses funded by the Australian government to give jobseekers the skills they need to find and retain work. MTC also works with employers to hire, upskill and retain staff, and local participants have told me that their lives have been changed by this program.

But the reality is that our employment services are overworked and undersupported by a system that is not set up to support the long-term unemployed or people with complex needs. Around one in five Workforce Australia participants, or about 140,000 people, have been in the system for five years or more, and they are being let down by the 'one size fits all' approach, so we are investing $312.1 million to replace this with three new tailored service streams: a digital stream, a provider-led support stream and an intensive services stream.