Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is telling that the Prime Minister has recognised his recent contribution to the skills crisis and categorises it as better late than never. That is a pretty good summation of how the Prime Minister has considered the skills debate in this country for the last decade that he has been in office. The government’s record on training can only be characterised as appalling. It has long neglected the need to adequately fund training courses, and Australia is now suffering. The government’s denial of the crisis, its willingness to try to paper over the cracks, has only allowed the training system to deteriorate. Its unwillingness to look beyond to the national interest means that, quite frankly, people in this country, young people, have missed out.

A number of government members have contributed to this debate so far, and many of them have focused on job creation. They have all marched into this place and sprouted the government’s line about how many jobs the government has created and how many more apprenticeships there are. What they have not been gloating about is how many young people have been turned away from TAFE in the last decade. They have not been saying anything about the fact that, under this government’s watch, over 300,000 young Australians have been turned away from TAFE, while 270,000 skilled workers have been imported to work in this country.

Also, they have not been crowing about the OECD’s Education at a glance report, which shows that since 1995 Australia is one of the only countries that has reduced its public sector investment in education. While other countries have increased their investment by an average of 48 per cent over that period, this country has cut spending in that regard by an average of seven per cent. As a result, teenage unemployment in some areas is at a level that, quite frankly, has not been seen for a lot of years. In particular, in my region of Werriwa—but let us talk a little more broadly and take in Macarthur as well—figures released in September this year indicate that teenage unemployment is now at 27.9 per cent, the highest it has been since April 2002.

In the Liverpool-Fairfield area, the figures show that nearly one in four teenagers is unemployed. When we look further afield, we see that teenage unemployment in the Illawarra is at a staggering 41 per cent. These are people who need to be invested in. While I hope that some residents in the south-west of Sydney will be able to take advantage of the 30,000 vouchers that the government proposes in its statement, I fear there are many people who will simply be left behind. Many people will not have the opportunity to gain further skills to assist them in finding secure, long-term employment. While the actions of the government will be welcomed by some, I know that there will be far too many people who will remain out in the cold.

I was interested to hear the Prime Minister hold firm to his commitment of 25 Australian technical colleges in his announcement about his commitment to training in this country. It is on the record that I have spoken out against these technical colleges in the past and I have been of the very clear view that these technical colleges are nothing but a poor facsimile of the existing TAFE system. I know they are a poor facsimile because they are the same, for all intents and purposes, as TAFE, the biggest difference being the requirement for teachers and staff of the Australian technical colleges to be engaged on Australian workplace agreements.

As members on both sides of the House realise, the government introduced the Australian technical colleges solely as a means of driving forward their industrial relations agenda. It was not about training opportunities for the young; it was about making sure that the tentacles of their extreme industrial relations laws extended as far as they possibly could. They had no inhibition about hooking onto everything from universities to the Australian TAFE system if it would further the interest of their industrial agenda.

It seems that the tentacles are not extending quite as far as the government would like, particularly in Western Sydney. Recent reports indicate that the Australian Technical College Western Sydney is in real doubt at the moment. On 16 October this year the ABC’s AM program reported:

The Federal Government’s plan for a network of technical colleges for teenagers to finish school while completing apprenticeships is in trouble.

The Western Sydney College, which was supposed to begin operating next year, now says it won’t be taking students, and there’s a question mark over whether it will start up at all.

That means that training opportunities for Western Sydney people are in real jeopardy. That is of considerable concern as there are plenty of people in the western suburbs of Sydney who would like nothing more than a chance to get into training, get a trade and target secure and permanent employment. Of course, the Western Sydney college is not the only technical college that is struggling to get off the ground at the moment. As AM reported: ‘Only five of the colleges are operating.’

If this is the commitment of this government to training—if this is the level of commitment they will bring to introducing their Skills for the Future package—then, quite frankly, they should not have bothered. The government’s ‘better late than never’ and ‘she’ll be right’ attitude to skills has got us where we are today. Australia is suffering from a skills shortage because of this government’s inactivity in looking to the future and training young Australians.

So far under the Australian technical colleges program we have spent $18 million on 281 students. Those students must be getting some really good training because that works out at $64,000 each. The most glaring oversight in the Prime Minister’s statement is that there is nothing to help young people who want to get into training and use that training to get a job. There is nothing in his statement which will address rising levels of teenage unemployment in the south-west of Sydney. Once again, the government has abandoned the needs of the people and the businesses of Western Sydney. What makes matters worse is that it has tried to simply paper over the cracks which it has allowed to appear in its system, and the young people of south-west Sydney are paying a huge price.

Labor has plans for skills, and unlike the government’s plan, you will not have to wait until you are over 25 to participate and take advantage. Labor has responded to the need to promote economic growth and secure prosperity into the future by investing in its people. We have been talking for a long time on our side of the House about the need to invest in the future of our young people and in the economic growth of this country. For some time now we have known that there are not going to be enough people to fill the demand for skilled labour into the future. We recognise the problem. We realise there is going to be a handbrake on growth because we have a shortage of skilled labour.

Our plans are trying to develop that and making provisions to assist economic growth through the training and education of our kids as they attempt to enter the workforce. Labor realises that it is about time that the trend of taking money away from education is reversed. Every other advanced economy in the OECD knows that to be the case. Simply investing in kids is not something we should be doing on the basis of seeking an immediate return in the next budget period. This is all about investing in generational growth and long-term economic security. That is why we have set up a program for investing in education right through from skills to higher education in this country—the very things that this government, 10 years ago, set about reversing once it got involved. This government set us on the path of reversing the trend that had occurred—that it had inherited from the Hawke-Keating government.

We know that it is important to invest in our children while they are at school and to fast-track them through apprenticeships. We outlined that in the skills blueprint in September. I have had some personal experience in this. One of my sons was able to be fast-tracked through trade training through his education while he was at school. He was able to achieve the first year of a trade apprentice training while he attended college. It took one whole year off his TAFE training as an electrician once he left school and I think it reduced his actual apprenticeship by a further six months. We know we can do these things, but we do not need to leave it to a school to do in isolation. This is something that we can actually plan to do in such a way that all kids are able to participate, not simply the lucky ones who have a headmaster who is sufficiently farsighted to think that this is a good way to assist people into vocational education.

Labor has announced that when in government it will address the fundamental skills issues: to get people back into traditional trades; to encourage them to see their apprenticeships through to the end, and to do that through a trade completion bonus; to scrap TAFE fees for traditional trades; and to get school students, like my son, to look at trades as a viable option while they are still at school. This is something that we on our side of the House are committed to, Mr Deputy Speaker Jenkins, as you are well aware. This is our policy. It is what our country needs if we are serious about addressing skills shortages into the future and if we are serious about productivity growth in our economy.

It is not enough to stand in this place, announce some big spending proposals and forget about everyone who is not 25 years and over. This government has consistently sneered at the public contribution to education. Its approach to cutting rather than contributing began in 1997 when it implemented massive budget cuts to TAFEs and universities. And that has continued ever since. In 1998, this government actually abolished the national skills shortage strategy. Just today we saw a report by Monash University that indicated that, unless the government acts on university education, gaps are set to emerge among managers, professionals and associate professionals—now and into the future. One of the authors, Professor Bob Birrell, is reported as having said today:

There’s been a decade of neglect of higher education on the part of the Coalition, and this is now showing up in serious shortages in the output of graduates from the higher education system ...

Now in a mad rush and flurry to spend—including, of course, for the obligatory advertising that is attached to this—we have a government that is out there simply attempting to cover up its 10 years of neglect of education, higher education and vocational training. (Time expired)

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