Albanese in future skills and jobs pitch

Labor leader Anthony Albanese has vowed to "circuit-break" a crisis in training and vocational education with a new federal agency targeting skills and workforce shortages.

Mr Albanese used his first major policy speech as opposition leader to promise to create Jobs and Skills Australia under a Labor government.

"I am determined to circuit-break the crisis in training and vocational education," he said in Perth on Tuesday.

The agency would be established with legislation and in partnership with large and small business leaders, unions, regional experts and federal, state and territory governments.

Mr Albanese wants it to be data-driven, working with labour market technology from professional websites Seek and LinkedIn.

He said the new agency would have a similar model to Infrastructure Australia, which he established as minister in 2008 and has since become bipartisan policy.

"A collaborative model to guide investment in human capital, just as Infrastructure Australia guides investment in physical capital," he said

Jobs and Skills Australia would undertake:

* Workforce and skills analysis

* Capacity studies, including for emerging and growing industries

* Specific plans for targeted cohorts such as the regions, workers aged over 55 and youth

* Reviews of the adequacy of the training and vocational system.

It would have an obligation to undertake workforce forecasting skills assessments for majority government-funded services like the National Disability Insurance Scheme, aged care and health.

Mr Albanese said Jobs and Skills Australia would form the basis of a new compact.

"It will work with business and unions to harness insights from industry to ensure that training is meeting not just today's needs but to anticipate how work is changing," the opposition leader said.

In coming months, Labor will also look at industrial relations reforms to address job insecurity and uncertainty for workers.

"It is time to have a conversation about new forms of worker protections, which can be made as flexible as the gig economy jobs they could cover, as well as benefit more traditional industries," the opposition leader said.

"Ideas like portable entitlements."

Labor will hold a "creative economy" summit in the first half of 2020 bringing together people from design, production and the visual arts.

The opposition also recommitted to its pre-election policy of establishing a national centre to drive investment in artificial intelligence.

The Labor leader put jobs at the heart of his pitch, indicating an Albanese government would be proactive in tackling evolving workplace changes.

"In the coming decades we need to create the conditions to prosper in our changing and dynamic world," he said.

"The future isn't going away. It's already with us."