Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australia is facing a critical skills shortage. I note, however, that in the budget brought down on 9 May there was nothing remotely addressing the skills needs facing Australia. There was no new money for TAFE; an overall reduction in the percentage of the budget spent on vocational education and training; a $13.7 million cut from a program to encourage apprenticeships in rural and regional areas; the abolition of a $38.5 million program aimed at getting more women in non-traditional apprenticeships like construction, automotive, engineering and mining trades; the abolition of a $23.2 million program to give IT skills to low-income older workers; and no extra money in the next four years for the National Skills Shortages Strategy. In fact, as a percentage of the federal budget, that figure will fall over the next four years from 0.75 per cent in 2005-06 to 0.67 per cent in 2009-10.

The Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006 seeks to bring forward the funding for the proposed Australian technical colleges from 2008-09 to 2006-07. Labor will not oppose this bill, as we will support any move by this government to improve the skills base of our nation. Nonetheless, I would be remiss if I did not raise the matter of the potential waste of money that this bill proposes. This is particularly pertinent against the background of the recent budget. When the original bill was debated in June 2005 my colleagues raised concerns about the nature of the technical colleges the government intended to introduce. One of the chief concerns was the ludicrous duplication of resources the bill proposed. I find it hard to believe that this was the solution the government came up with to solve Australia’s skills shortage.

Of course, the concept of Australian technical colleges crystallises the government’s agenda on two fronts: industrial relations and education. ATCs further privatise our education system and have the potential to damage enrolments and course offerings at nearby high schools. Individual contracts and performance pay appear to be the hallmarks of the colleges. I will refer to this again shortly. The government talks about the fact that local industry and communities will have a leadership role in the governance of the colleges. The colleges will teach the skills required by local business. There is a real danger that the courses will become enterprise based rather than industry focused, resulting in young people gaining qualifications that cannot be transported across the industry. The real ideological attack is on public education and the government’s underhanded attempt to deregulate the national training system. In abolishing the Australian National Training Authority, the government is increasing the already heavy influence of peak industry bodies such as the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Business Council of Australia.

The biggest influence on schools and colleges is coming from industry to the extent that their perceived needs overwhelm any other purposes of schooling. Every state and territory has a viable technical skills training structure. These colleges have been severely constrained since 1996 by the massive cuts in Commonwealth funding. Investment in our universities and TAFEs has fallen eight per cent since 1995, which is a poor testimony to this government’s commitment to vocational education. Australia is now only one of three countries in the OECD where public expenditure accounts for less than half the spending on universities and TAFEs. We are in the company of the Czech Republic, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Sweden. We are below the average among developed countries for public expenditure on education per student. In March 2006 the OECD issued its Factbook for 2006. Figures show that spending for each Australian tertiary student fell seven per cent since 1995, compared to an average 12 per cent increase between 1995 and 2002 for those other OECD countries for which data was available.

The government is seeking to replicate its assault on universities with this attack on technical colleges. The public sector is hollowed out by the creation of selective, better funded alternatives which leave the public system behind. This is what the Australian Education Union had to say in 2005 in a briefing paper entitled ‘Australian Technical Colleges: not the solution to the skills shortage’:

They are designed as elitist institutes—selective VET schools. They will have selective entry and preferential funding. They are intended to head hunt the best VET teachers from existing schools and TAFE through higher pay.

Demand for labour is peaking now. The community is experiencing skills shortages now. These shortages are holding Australia back from potential investment, undermining job creation, reducing exports and reducing the size of the economic pie to be shared by all Australians. The shortage of skilled tradespeople is becoming a real barrier to Australia’s economic prosperity.

None of this is new. It comes as no surprise that the country is short of tradespeople. The labour movement has been saying this for years. Yet the government’s approach is to fiddle at the margins, not to confront the real obstacles to apprenticeship training in Australia. This government seeks to impose new technical colleges across the country yet continues to underfund those that do exist. These colleges will not produce a single tradesperson until 2010. At the current rate of enrolment, they will not produce too many even then. There are only four colleges operating in 2006, and these enrolled fewer than 300 students. Many regions are still without a preferred tenderer and the Minister for Vocational and Technical Education has threatened to scrap several of the planned colleges.

I fail to see the logic of providing funding for new college infrastructure. On top of that, what about staff? TAFEs are currently finding it difficult to ensure appropriate levels of staffing, and this proposal simply spreads the available qualified teachers even more thinly. Commonsense alone says this is wrong. Of course, let us not forget the other side of the agenda in establishing these colleges. This is to establish the thin edge of the wedge in industrial relations. Funding for the colleges is conditional on specific industrial arrangements, including the provision of AWAs, individual contracts of employment and performance pay. In its submission to the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Legislation Committee inquiry into the original bill, the Independent Education Union stated:

The governance arrangements of ATCs are not totally clear, yet the ideological motives are transparent. Where the government can do so it will tie funding to ensuring that employees are offered Australian Workplace Agreements. Employees who staff these colleges will come from both the government and non-government sectors.

The IEU expressed its philosophical position on the ideological motives of the legislation and continued:

It is a false assumption that AWAs will somehow achieve higher rates of pay for teachers employed in ATCs.

If the government is truly focused on solutions to address the national skills shortage, why is there the need to tie in employment conditions? It is no doubt to continue its foul industrial relations agenda from another angle.

The government also fiddled at the edges of this crisis by importing apprenticeships through the introduction of the trade skills training visa, subclass 471. This gives apprenticeships to unskilled migrants rather than to young Australians. These visas are in a range of Australian regional areas where young Australians face chronic unemployment—up to one in three are unemployed. Do not get me wrong: I support immigration, but in this scheme employers are not even required to advertise apprenticeships locally. We must fund those people in Australia wishing to undertake apprenticeships, not turn them away from TAFE and not create new colleges when those that exist are inadequately funded.

There are many ways that this ideological decision will affect the public vocational sector. I summarise a community leaflet produced by the New South Wales Teachers Federation in August 2005. There will be fewer publicly funded places and fewer courses as TAFE is forced to increase its commercial activities. On entrepreneurialism, there will be a less capable workforce as quality in TAFE qualifications is reduced by an increase in student-teacher ratios, significantly less course duration, reduced student access to teachers and reduced access to preferred courses, especially in rural areas. There will be questionable qualifications as each year more vocational education is privatised and given to profit-making trainers. Apprenticeships will be cut short by tampering with the state apprenticeship system. There will be fewer expert teachers, as industrial rights disappear and teaching loses its attraction. There will be a higher cost of tradespeople, other skilled workers and services due to worsening skills shortages.

I support the second reading amendment proposed by the member for Jagajaga which highlights the incompetent handling of this matter. Labor will support this bill despite its blatant disregard for the needs of young Australians. The government have been in office now for over 10 years and sooner or later they are going to be held to account. This is not the only area where they are bringing up some half-baked schemes and creating a smoke and mirrors situation to overcome their incompetence and ineptitude and to fool the public into believing that something is going to be done to fix the problem. Sooner or later it is going to catch up to them. They are going to be held to account on their rhetoric, and that is why I think that in this area they have done the wrong thing. I think there is an ideological mindset against TAFEs, the states and the state system. We should have picked up the existing infrastructure, worked with the states and used existing TAFEs to boost apprenticeships and skills instead of these colleges. Time will tell. We will see what is produced by this government, but I predict that not much will come of this venture. A lot of money will be poured in but there will not be a lot of results.

See this speech in context