Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (09:59): But I was already thinking of doing a members statement on the woeful state of apprenticeships in Victoria. Half of apprentices quit their apprenticeship before they are qualified. We have dropped to the lowest trade commencement rate since 2001. We are losing tradies faster than we can even train them. The plumbers, chippies, sparkies – all of our best qualified tradies who would have taken on apprentices and built up their own small private businesses – are now being sucked up by the Big Build sites. Obviously there are more big sinkholes than big projects being built, but never mind. These apprentices cannot get positions, and the ones that they can get have low pay and poor conditions. They are seeing no benefit for the hard work that they are doing, and they are quitting. This is the government competing against its own citizens, and of course the government always wins because the government can always pay more using our money, which means Victorians are left with less of everything. The government brags about the Big Build, but all I see is a big tradie crisis as well as a big debt crisis. What we need to do is cut the red tape on employers, stop taxing tradies and small businesses as though they were the problem, make apprenticeships available and attractive and survivable for Aussies. These kids can help rebuild our state if we let them. The government just needs to get out of their way.