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

I am just so glad that the member for Jagajaga did not become the education minister after the last election. If she had, the number of people enrolled in the Australian technical college around Australia would be zero—because there would not be such colleges. The member for Jagajaga is very churlish and very uncharitable in her approach. People in all these different places around Australia are less than impressed by her approach on this. The nonsense she has peddled about Gladstone, for instance, has gone over like a lead weighted battleship in that particular city, which has a great commitment to vocational and technical education that has been enhanced by extra funds from this government.

She would not want to show up at Port Macquarie or Taree either, because she would be tarred and feathered because of her churlish and uncharitable comments about the way that St Joseph’s vocational college is enhancing what it has done in the past. Even worse; if there were any commitment by the member opposite to school based apprenticeships, she would be joining with me and demanding that New South Wales in particular, but also Western Australia, get with the program and give the sort of opportunities that are available every day to people in Queensland and that are becoming available every day to people in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory. But these sorts of opportunities seem to be a foreign concept in Western Australia, a state run by the CFMEU—with the CFMEU’s head numbers person being that state’s education minister—and in New South Wales, where Unions New South Wales refuses to allow part-time apprenticeships. Is it any wonder that businesses in New South Wales are leaving the state? I invite the member for Jagajaga to refocus her energy on joining with us on this to try to bring about and broker the change we want.

The simple reality is that currently there are over 300 school based apprenticeships, not all operating at the certificate III level because of the New South Wales intransigence and failure to update. The ambition is very clear: with over 20 colleges that should be operating come the 2007 school year, there will be over 2,000 school based apprenticeships. I suspect that by about this time next year we will see something in the order of 2½ thousand school based apprenticeships operating.

This government is actually about giving opportunity to young people. We are not about prescribing—as the Labor Party have done state by state around this country—that kids have to remain at school until they finish year 12 or kids have to remain at school until they are 17 or 18, depending on where they are, and yet not providing full range of pathways and opportunities. This government has done more to expand the notion of success that individuals can achieve by taking on the trades than those opposite ever dreamed about. They had this lazy view that training was about burying further the massive levels of unemployment. In 1993, when they trashed the training system with the recession we had to have and 30,000 people left it overnight, we saw a whole series of programs under Working Nation, which was actually all about using training to hide the real level of unemployment in this country.

All I say to the member for Jagajaga is that, if she were genuine in her inquiry this evening, she would be saying to me: ‘Minister, tell me how I can help you succeed? Minister, tell me how I can talk those silly people in state governments in New South Wales and Western Australia into getting with the program? Tell me how I can go to the union movement and say, “Hold on a second; you have no chance of growing your union membership if you don’t have people in the workforce, in the trades”?’

But the member for Jagajaga has shown that she is not genuine in this. This is all about trying to get some fodder for a press release, and I can think of all of her lines now. The sad reality for the member for Jagajaga is that I look forward to this churlish and uncharitable press release that she will put out, because all that it will do is further develop the view amongst the state ministers—and indeed amongst the constituency that she is trying to offer some shadow representation to—that in fact she knows nothing about what she is talking about.

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