Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The government asked us to recite some facts. I will give you a very salient fact. Today, there are 84,000 people in Western Australia that are unemployed—that is 5.9 per cent. That is the highest rate of unemployment in Western Australia since the days of the Howard government, when it peaked at that height in December 2003. So we have a very significant problem in Western Australia that we need to deal with.

I will mention a few more facts. The Assistant Minister for Education came to Western Australia recently. She was being interviewed about apprenticeships. John McGlue, the journalist, asked her: 'Why are apprenticeships now just not as popular as they used to be …'. Do you know what she did? She blamed the schools. She said:

Look, there's lots of reasons and to some extent I blame careers advisors in schools … there's not enough “try a trade” for those kids in school so they can see what it is they want to do.

There is not enough 'try a trade'—that is the fundamental problem, she says. She has blamed the school teachers, she has blamed the advisers and she has blamed the lack of the opportunity for students to try a trade. It is really important to have a try-a-trade capacity within our schools to give children, students and young people the opportunity to have a go at these trade skills, to see whether they are suited to them. Indeed, that was absolutely what this program was all about. Today, we have seen her saying, 'This has been a failure. You have only delivered 320 across Australia.' I actually think that is a great achievement. To say that we are going to cut the money because you have only delivered 320 of these seems to me to be absolute madness.

We have 49 trade training centres operational in Western Australia, and they are affecting around 150 schools that are involved in clusters. They are absolutely delivering. The sorts of nonsense that I heard coming from the government today really are not borne out by our experience in Western Australia. I want to talk about two centres that I know well, one in my old electorate of Armadale, which has been operational for around three years. They have got programs being delivered by Polytechnic West, and there is absolutely no doubt that it is attracting far more kids into the trade. I am also talking about Morley Senior High School, which is in a cluster of five schools and is delivering through its trade training centres. It has become very competitive to get a place at Morley Senior High School. We even have parents who have taken their children out of private schools in the area and put them into some of the cluster schools so they can gain entry to the automotive program, so highly sought after is it. Private enterprise is represented on the panel that selects the students. Industry is deeply involved in these programs. This has been an excellent program and it is absolutely bizarre that we are cutting it.

At the same time that we are cutting down our base of skilled people we are loosening the reins on 457 visa class. We have already seen the start of that. We have 21 per cent of people on 457 visas in Western Australia. They have played an important part. We did recognise last year that this scheme was getting a little bit out of control and that there were many people coming into Western Australia when there was growing unemployment. We need to ensure the 457 visa class has community support, and we are not going to do that if we are systematically loosening the reins on it, as is underway now with the government, and allowing people of very modest skill levels coming in when we have got 84,000 people in Western Australia that are unemployed. Here we have a government that is saying we have to unleash the 457 visas, that we are going to take off the restrictions so we can bring in more skills from overseas, and at the same time dumbing down our education system and taking out that very, very successful plan. (Time expired)

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