Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I do not know the exact number of people involved in school based apprenticeships, but I do know that the eastern Melbourne consortium have an obligation, in a contractual form, to ensure that each of the students involved with the Australian Technical College East Melbourne are involved in a school based apprenticeship. They either do that at the beginning of their enrolment or, indeed, once they have achieved some of their prevocational occupational health and safety studies and those sorts of things; it depends on how the school itself is structured. Either way, the students have a commitment. The consortium also has a commitment to have those students not only in a school based apprenticeship but in a certificate III school based apprenticeship—in other words, one that reflects a real trade-based assessment. In anticipation of further questions, the one at Port Macquarie simply cannot do that.

If the member for Jagajaga were really committed to this cause, she would get on the phone to the New South Wales Minister for Education and Training—if she would take the call—and demand that she stop playing at shadow boxing on this and deliver Australian school based apprenticeship opportunities to what I would estimate are between 5,000 and 7,000 students in New South Wales. The member for Jagajaga could do that today. But the problem is—and we saw it just the other week with the rollover by the member for Brand on the question of Australian workplace agreements—that John Robertson from Unions New South Wales is running the New South Wales government and not any of the people who sit in the cabinet room.

I cannot give you the exact number of people who are involved in whatever trades or apprenticeships. But we do expect each of these consortiums, rightly, to live up to its contractual agreement to provide at least these apprenticeships. In a state like New South Wales that is quite radical. Yet every day in Queensland, the North Queensland technical college is developing itself and already has over 100 bids from employers to take on school based apprentices. I think it is amazing, when you compare that with what is happening in New South Wales.

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