Jaeyden Wardle may have to make a tough decision to stop being his mother’s full-time carer if there’s a funding cut to TAFE courses.
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He said he was relieved to have Labor’s Deputy Leader Tayna Plibersek announcing the party’s plans to scrap upfront fees for TAFE courses.
“There’s a bit of a grey area whether the TAFE is going to continue to offer the enrolled nursing courses,” he said.
Mr Wardle said if the course is discontinued he may have to move away from his mother.
“It’s possible that I might have to move to Launceston or Melbourne to continue studies,” he said.
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“She (his mother) has a few chronic illnesses. It would become a choice of whether I continue to be a carer or continue my studies, which is a very hard choice for anyone to make.”
Ms Plibersek said the course funding would impact 100,000 Australians.
“At a time when we continue to see many skills shortages on that skills shortage list for years at a time. It makes absolutely no sense to be cutting vocational education,” she said.
“If you look at the electorate of Braddon alone there are 700 fewer apprentices and trainee in Braddon today than when the Liberals were first elected.”
She said the cost of the TAFE commitment would be around $400 million over a short-term of four years and around $700 million over the medium-term.
‘Where we have high youth unemployment it makes no sense for the young people in this electorate and those older workers who are retraining taking up opportunities... it makes no sense for those people to be missing out on an apprenticeship or training opportunity.”
Liberal Senator Richard Colbeck said his goverment had established a $1.5 billion Skilling Australia Fund which aims to create an extra 300,000 apprenticeships over the next four years.
“Under the Coalition Government in Canberra and the Liberals in Tasmania, school retention rates are higher, and more students are choosing to attend university,” he said.
“This combined with an unemployment rate that was above 9 per cent when the coalition came to Government which is now close to 6 per cent goes a long way to explaining the changes in student statistics.”