Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006. I spoke on this some time back, in June last year, when the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Bill 2005 first came before us. I raised some matters of general concern about the government’s proposals then and I continue to have concerns. I queried whether directing the funds to create the 25 new colleges was in fact good public policy and to what extent it was an adequate response to the nation’s skills crisis.

You will recall that at the time the Australian technical colleges were first announced the Prime Minister himself said the colleges were the ‘centrepiece of our drive to tackle skills shortages and to revolutionise vocational education and training throughout Australia’. It seemed to me then and it is the case today that that statement was overblown hyperbole. At best, if the 25 colleges went ahead, producing in the vicinity of 7,500 tradespeople in the years 2010-12, how on earth was that revolutionising vocational education and training and tackling the major national issue of skill shortages? It was a drop in the ocean. At best there would be 7,500 trained tradespeople when everybody estimates that the skills shortage today is in the vicinity of 100,000 people.

I have listened to the contributions from government members and the constant refrain seems to be that the skill shortages that this nation faces are the consequence of a booming economy and a decline in unemployment rates. That argument does not fit the regional picture that we in the Illawarra face. For example, the most recent data shows that in the Illawarra the unemployment rate is still very high—probably the highest of all the regions—at 8.9 per cent. In May the teenage full-time unemployment rate was 36.8 per cent—an absolute disgrace. You cannot argue that the skill shortages in the Illawarra have arisen because of a booming economy and low unemployment. The facts just do not back that up. When one looked at the proposition of public funding to establish a new Australian technical college, one wondered what the efficacy of that commitment would be. At best, 300 students in the Illawarra would get the chance of doing courses in the new technical college facility, but that college is not up and running and the skills crisis that my region faces is not going away. It is getting worse every day.

What is the purpose of expending public funds to build a parallel system when the TAFE system in my region is more than adequately coping with the range of pressures that are on it? I will give you an example. If this college was established in the Illawarra, there would be 300 trained tradespeople probably by the year 2012. In the last two years, we have placed 220 unemployed young people into apprenticeships, because through our TAFE system we have been able to provide six months of pre-apprenticeship training, courtesy of the commitment made by the state Labor government. On top of that, we have had some modest funding from the federal government. But every time we go to the federal government it is like drawing blood out of a stone. An investment of $100,000 by the government each year has seen 220 young unemployed people in my region placed into apprenticeships. So I contend that there are different ways of addressing the youth unemployment issue linked with the skills crisis.

Debate interrupted.

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