Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006. I rise to express my concerns for the Australians who need to develop skills with which they can earn a decent living and pay for the sorts of things most of us here take for granted—that is, a home that we can own, a family and the prospect of saving for the future and inevitably retirement without being crushed by debt, which is becoming a greater burden each year. We saw recently interest rates get higher, together with household debt, and petrol prices will climb even higher in the very near future. Young Australians need opportunities to engage in the workforce. They need to find their niche and, through the development of their skills and experience, establish a career that is going to ensure for them a decent day’s pay for a decent day’s work.

I also rise to express my concern for people’s ability to do business in a skilled labour deprived environment. Shortages of skilled labour will only lead to frustrated growth and inflated costs—not a situation that is likely to reap rewards for Australia and most of its people. I spend a lot of time listening to the views of my electorate, as most members do in this place. I listen to all the views that I can hear. I listen to people that I meet in the street, I listen to radio et cetera. On talkback radio recently, in particular, the Leon Byner program on 5AA, I heard Leon talk—and I must thank him for raising a very good point—about a former South Australian Premier, and a Liberal Premier at that, Thomas Playford, who earned the respect of all South Australians regardless of their political persuasion. Leon Byner spoke on the 5AA program of Tom Playford’s belief—it is a very important belief—that, if you have a skilled workforce, the investment and the jobs will follow; without a skilled workforce, you are praying for rain.

Like many regional areas in Australia, Adelaide has experienced a drain on our youth in the past—a drain that has thankfully been reversed thanks to the Rann Labor government in South Australia. In years gone by many young people have been lured interstate to further their education and training and, ultimately, careers and family lives. The state Labor government has managed to turn this around. What South Australia has needed to retain its young people is opportunity—opportunity to develop skills, to secure gainful employment, to save for a home and a family and to continue to develop skills that will keep a person in good stead within the workforce. Any community will want to retain its own young people—the people who have family in the area, a connection with the community, a history of shared experiences, a stake in its future and a commitment to that area. Surely, there are no better people in whom to invest education and the development of skills and career than our very own young people, who are most likely to stay within a region and continue to contribute long into the future.

The government’s New Apprenticeships scheme has been in operation for some time now. The government counts it as one of its great successes. But many would argue that it has failed young Australians and failed our workforce requirements. The National Centre for Vocational Education Research report Australian qualifications framework lower-level qualifications: Pathways to where for young people? shows that only 33 per cent of people enrolled in a certificate I qualification and 43 per cent of people enrolled in a certificate II qualification complete their courses. Of the few who do complete, over a third of participants said they saw no real job related benefits in the training they received. This government pays out over $76 million to employers as incentives to take on certificate II trainees, including $18 million for retail courses and $6 million for hospitality. Research shows young people in these courses have been used as cheap labour and have not been given the skills they need for future full-time employment. It may well be that the government has identified a stale smell coming from the New Apprenticeships scheme, as it is reportedly going to spend $24 million to give it a facelift—renaming it Australian Apprenticeships, according to yesterday’s Advertiser.

The government’s claim that it is tremendous at managing the nation is at odds with its history and its apparent addiction to coming up with means by which greater numbers of people can come in from overseas to take paid employment. Year after year, more and more people are coming in through skilled labour, unskilled labour and regional programs. This government has managed the situation such that it confesses to require a flood of imported labour just to keep the economy ticking over and for the skills shortfalls to not cause it acute political damage. This government’s management philosophy is identified in Australia’s being the only developed country that is reducing public investment in institutions such as our TAFEs and universities. That investment has been reduced by eight per cent since 1995. The OECD average is a 38 per cent increase. This management philosophy is also evident in its hypothesis that, if you decrease people’s packages of pay and conditions, they are likely to work harder and smarter.

The government has not only allowed the overall percentage of the federal budget spent on vocational education and training to fall but reinforced this decline by allowing the percentage to continue to fall over the period of the forward estimates. The government’s latest solution was thrown at the Australian public in a $6 billion, $100 million per minute grab bag of policies that came streaming out in the Liberal and National parties joint 2004 campaign launch—such is the attention this problem received. It is a political problem to which the government has attempted only a political fix, with no substance and no expectation of delivering what the country needs—just like the New Apprenticeships scheme’s expected make-up job.

The government’s policy of brand new technical colleges springing up around the country is not delivering what young people, industry and the nation require. Of the 25 Australian technical colleges that have been promised, only four are open for business, enrolling fewer than 300 students. As at 30 May 2006, $185 million had been committed to the Australian technical colleges but only $18 million had been spent. I have to wonder whether the government is going to spend what it has made provision for—$343 million over five years. While the construction of a new institution such as this is interesting to watch, the opportunity costs of slow progress, protracted negotiations and the effects of tying this initiative to its obsession with AWAs are too great for Australia to gamble with. This is not the time for experimentation, for trying to stare down the public. It may, I hope, see them buckle to its insistence on AWAs.

The prospect of AWAs being forcibly inflicted upon public sector agencies, riveted into the agencies’ very existence and forcing themselves upon more Australians, betrays the government’s belief that the creeping advance of AWAs is a higher political priority than training our kids for work and providing the economy with the skilled workforce that it needs. Isn’t this amazing, coming from the self-appointed patriarch of personal choice? The continuing skills problem is evident in the skilled vacancies May 2006 index, which shows vacancies in electrical and electronics trades rose 3.3 per cent, in construction trades 2.1 per cent, in automotive trades 2.9 per cent, for chefs 3.9 per cent and for hairdressing 6.3 per cent. That is in a single month. That is one month’s slide backwards.

Australia needs a more systematic approach to promoting trades and science and technology education than the government’s 25 technical colleges. If this is the best this government can do, Australians will no doubt look to Labor’s plan. Labor will work collaboratively and constructively with the state and territory governments, not start a federal versus state hissing match—as we have seen—to tackle the problem at its base. Labor will provide for sound training opportunities, building on what already exists and what needs to be ratcheted up to increase not only the take-up of such training but successful completion that establishes long-term careers and benefits to industry.

Labor’s skills blueprint, released in September 2005, outlines what I believe Australia needs to build our skills base through the secondary education system. We must offer young people better choices by teaching trades, technology and science in first-class facilities that encourage participation and the desire to engage and learn; establish a trades-in-schools scheme to double the number of school based apprenticeships in areas of skills shortage and provide extra funding per place; establish specialist schools for the senior years in areas such as trades, technology and science; and establish a trades taster program so that years 9 and 10 students can experience a range of trade options, which could also lead to pre-apprenticeship programs. These are real benefits for young people. Only Labor is focused on increasing the number of young Australians who successfully complete their apprenticeships. The next Labor government will achieve this through the establishment of an $800 per year skills account, which would abolish up-front TAFE fees, and a $2,000 trade completion bonus, under which traditional apprentices would receive a $1,000 payment halfway through their training and a further $1,000 payment at the completion of their apprenticeship. The aim of this scheme is an 80 per cent completion rate.

There is a very clear choice before the electorate. There is a clear point of difference between the Liberal government opposite and the party that is committed to improving young Australians’ access to and long-term success within the workforce. This government has nothing to hang its hat on but the radical increase in skilled migration. It clearly cannot fix the skills shortage and it has largely given up, preferring to pull people from other countries and other training systems. I think we all want to see young Australians take available jobs. I want them to have access to affordable training, to incentives to work hard and complete their training, to employable skills and to a great future serving their own communities and taking pride in both their work and their contribution to their community and to Australia.

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