Thursday, 5 March 2026

 Peter WALSH (Murray Plains) (10:25): I speak in absolute frustration at the Victorian government’s reckless and short-sighted cuts to apprenticeship and traineeship incentives and the devastating impact they will have on organisations in my electorate such as Swan Hill’s Murray Mallee Training. Let us be clear, this is not merely a budget adjustment. This government has chosen to pick winners and losers in our training system. By prioritising which apprenticeships receive funding, it is actively stripping support from critical regional communities, including in horticulture and agriculture, the very sectors which sustain communities across the Mallee. Murray Mallee Training’s group training model exists because small regional businesses cannot carry the financial and administrative burden of employing apprentices alone. It spreads risk, provides mentoring, keeps young people in work and gives students career path options. Yet the government has cut the very incentive which makes this model viable, undermining one of the most effective pathways into skilled employment in north-west Victoria. In Swan Hill and across the Murray Mallee, horticulture and agriculture are not optional extras, they are economic pillars. These industries rely on skilled workers and rely on structured traineeships, and now because of arbitrary funding priorities set in Melbourne, those pathways are being choked off. Small family-run enterprises are being told their industries are somehow less worthy of support. Young people are being told their chosen trade or traineeship does not fit the government’s preferred list. That is not workplace planning, it is bureaucratic interference at its worst and truly disrespectful to regional communities.