Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Absolutely empty. Those facilities are at the old Townsville High School site in the city, which is currently occupied by TAFE and is surplus to requirements. That is the ideological driver that has been going on with the Labor Party and that is really unfortunate.

The Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia's Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006 is about flexibility. It is about allowing the government to bring forward the opening of new technical colleges as soon as possible. It is about being able to properly fund the new technical colleges—because they are all different. This is a fantastic model because it allows regions to decide for themselves what is best for their region. It allows regions to decide which skill sets should be covered in the ATCs. It allows regions to decide where colleges might be located and what facilities might be provided. That is what then results in every college being different from every other college. Surely that is a good thing. It is in line with the government’s thinking on industrial relations where we do not believe that somebody sitting in a centralised place in Melbourne can decide how an employee is going to work in North Queensland, because working conditions can be quite different in different regions of Australia and to have employees subject to the same conditions right across the country is clearly a nonsense. That is how we feel about the Australian technical colleges—that in fact regions should be able to have the flexibility to design a college and the courses necessary to suit that exact region.

But it has gone on from there. In Townsville, industry has positively embraced 110 per cent the concept of an Australian technical college in North Queensland. They have given hundreds of hours of their time to work with the board to make sure that we get the best result. Do you know what the result is? The college was going to open with 100 places. Those places are already fully filled. The college is not yet built and they are already filled. Industry has said, ‘We will have 100 places in that college.’ I note that the Minister for Vocational and Technical Education is at the table. I am not certain whether we have advised the minister formally yet—

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