Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to make a few comments on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2007. As has been indicated, the opposition will support this bill. However, we in the opposition suggest that it falls a long way short of what needs to be done to address Australia’s crisis in skilled labour, particularly in traditional trades. Australia has arrived at this point because of more than a decade of neglect by the Howard government.

Perhaps the member for Canning ought to have a look at the facts. The government’s figures show a shortfall of 200,000 skilled workers in Australia over the next five years. The figures also suggest that the government’s technical colleges will turn out fewer than 10,000 graduates by 2010. We are therefore debating a bill that invests in bricks and mortar when there is plenty of existing vocational education and training infrastructure that this government could simply invest in in partnership with the private sector and state and territory governments—a cooperative way forward. The problem is that the Howard government will not invest in the existing secondary schools or the TAFE system around Australia. These are schools and colleges that are convenient to local communities and would greatly benefit from better resourcing and a cooperative approach to training between the Commonwealth, state and territory governments and, importantly, the private sector.

What we have got is an ideological war by the Howard government with state and territory governments. The government also lacks an understanding of the needs of the private sector—the people who actually employ apprentices. Alternatively, unlike the coalition, a federal Labor government would invest $2.5 billion in all Australian secondary schools to promote vocational education—an across-the-board approach. That investment would be supported by programs targeting stronger links between schools and industry and it would improve student access to on-the-job training, which is fundamental to success in trade training. Nevertheless, I am sure that the communities getting these new technical colleges—for example, in Penrith, north-eastern Perth and southern Brisbane—will be pleased to get them. What they need more than bricks and mortar are new ideas and initiatives that encourage kids to take up trades in the first place, to finish their apprenticeships, to use their trades in the workforce and to then go on and develop further skills throughout their working lives. I refer to a local initiative in my electorate of Batman—the Northland Secondary College, which is a huge success story. I have an electorate in which there are still young people who do not even finish years nine and 10, let alone start an apprenticeship or go to university, because of some of the social problems that we confront locally. But I have a local secondary college that I am exceptionally proud of—a college that is trying to do something about this in its existing structure. It is a model we should all have regard for—the cluster model. With the assistance of local employers, we have created a skills centre—the Manufacturing and Technology Centre—for school students. This centre offers years 11 and 12 young people VET certificate courses in engineering, automotive and furnishing in the northern suburbs of Melbourne—skills that are required by local industry.

The initiative was made possible by a grant from the Victorian government, supported by ANTA, an organisation unfortunately abolished two years ago on the watch of this government. It was about working and achieving at a local level, drawing in a national organisation made up of the state and territory governments and the Commonwealth. ANTA was therefore about a national approach, whilst bringing into play the role of the Victorian government with a grant of $750,000. That school is actually producing trained young people today, not in 2010. I saw some of them undertake their training only a couple of weeks ago.

Just as the Northland Secondary College is supported by local employers, so is the Gladstone Schools Engineering Skills Centre, in Queensland, which was established in 2003 in one of Australia’s major resource and export centres. The Gladstone Schools Engineering Skills Centre is a unique training and learning environment, co-located within the NRG Gladstone power station and focused on preparing year 11 and 12 students for a smooth transition into the workforce as apprentices or trainees in the engineering fields. I have also visited this centre.

Existing educational institutions and the private sector got together and established their own technical centre on a real worksite where kids could learn about and experience real-life occupational health and safety procedures and standards, learn to operate industrial machinery and, in essence, get exposure to the real world of work. The centre mirrors the expectations, ethics, safety standards and discipline of engineering and manufacturing workplaces. Students strive to develop competency in certificate I in engineering and manufacturing, focusing on both theory and practical components. Working industry hours, in industry clothing and using personal safety equipment, students undertake 1½ days of training at the centre, a one-day work placement and two days of study at school to obtain a senior certificate. Since the centre began operating, 90 per cent of year 12 students who have completed the program have been successful in gaining an apprenticeship or traineeship in the engineering trades.

The program itself is based on the ACCI employability skills framework. It is producing the goods. It is avoiding duplication, inefficiencies and competition for scarce resources out there in the Australian community. See how the private sector, Queensland TAFE and the University of Central Queensland, along with the local secondary schools, are working together to produce results—practical, local training in Gladstone. They did not need an offer of more bricks and mortar from the Commonwealth, which is what they got. I am sure it is welcome, but a better approach would have been to sit down and work with the local community, business, the schools, the TAFE and the university and ask them how they could best build on the successful local initiative to take it to the next level.

There are similar examples in Tasmania. The coalition’s election policy on technical colleges was designed on the run, based on a mainland template for a situation that does not exist in Tasmania. Tasmania’s emphasis on workplace vocational education and training, as opposed to school based VET, is quite different from that of most mainland states. The reality is that the money allocated to this policy in Tasmania should have been spent on adding to and expanding the current VET training system within the existing framework for skills development and training in Tasmania. That is because Tasmania has decent senior secondary colleges, with a number of independent schools also providing relevant VET courses, in addition to TAFE and private providers. Why duplicate it? Why create a mess?

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