Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I note that one member laughs at that, and probably he was too negligent with his kids to give them that bit of assistance. But why is it that only a trade union can do that job? Parents, grandparents or whoever else has the time can do it much better, and the responsible ones do it.

Remember that the Australian government suffered great political damage when we did the right thing to reform the Australian tax system by introducing a GST. It was hotly contested, not only by the members of the Labor Party in this place but by all those Labor premiers who, once the GST came into effect, could not get into the queue to get the money quick enough. What did our Prime Minister tell the Australian people during the campaign? He said that this was a growth tax so that state governments could properly meet their responsibilities in hospitals, law and order and education. The next speaker might tell me where the money has gone, because it has not gone into those areas. The states have closed down their tech colleges, they are closing down police stations—for example, in my electorate—and, no matter where you turn in Australia, the delivery of public hospital services is a mess. Now, in response to that and recognising the rights of the taxpayer, our government is looking at opportunities to assist community run hospitals, and I applaud the Minister for Health and Ageing for nominating those that are community run.

I do not know where the money goes, but, no matter how much we pour into state government coffers, it does not come out in better educational services. So we have had to give opportunities to young people like the young man I mentioned who ended up a senior manager. He took the opportunity to be apprenticed at the end of year 10—we called it third year in those days—but immediately commenced a night school program in his secondary years, while he was at work. Look at the benefits he achieved. All of those opportunities exist.

I want to make special reference to a secondary school program of vocational education that exists at the agricultural colleges in my electorate. These are residential and offer a very broad range of education. They give the necessary training in English, mathematics and those sorts of subjects; yet, you go to their field days and find magnificent furniture. And the card on the piece of furniture will say, ‘made by Mary Smith’. Not only that, but Bill Smith might have welded up a trailer for the family farm. Then you will find that ‘Mary Smith’ has come up from Perth to take up that educational opportunity. Yet when parents throughout my electorate want their children to take up that educational opportunity and find there is another secondary school between them and the available agricultural college, they are not given the financial assistance that is otherwise available in boarding allowances and things of that nature. I think that is silly.

This raises another issue which I want to identify to the parliament. The Narrogin agricultural college has an agreement with the Western Australian Farm Machinery Dealers Association, which assists them in running a course for agricultural machinery repairs and maintenance. These kids are coming out of years 11 and 12 well prepared to go to work with the machinery dealer and, as an apprentice, pick up the last bit of training they need.

I can remember in earlier years, as a shadow minister, visiting the Repco apprentices school in Melbourne, which was closed down by the Hawke government. It was run by Repco, doing the same thing as these colleges, and employers found it better to pay Repco to take their apprentices on for those two years and get them up to a basic skills standard so that, when they entered the workforce, they were not on the broom or all the things that are often said about young apprentices. They went straight to work, they were productive and the employer had an advantage because the money they spent in providing that education and training was saved by the productivity of the individual when they arrived in the workplace.

As a youth, I had the opportunity with my secondary education credentials to apply for a job as a cadet scientist with CSIRO. I am rather glad to say that they did not take me on; someone else got the cadetship. But what did those cadetships provide and why should big business—maybe I will remind the Business Council in my discussions with them this evening—not complain, when they abandoned cadetships, about the lack of availability of people with the skills they require? Cadetships meant you were employed but went to university when you had to attend, but when the holidays came around you went back into the laboratory or whatever was related with that training. I think it is a tragedy that big business walked away from that and expected the taxpayer to carry the full burden. The quicker they revisit those sorts of arrangements the better. It helped young people. They did not end up, as they do today, with a HECS debt.

Notwithstanding the comments that are frequently made by the shadow minister in this regard, HECS was brought in by the Hawke government, and it was brought in because a previous member for Werriwa decided Australia could have free universities and nearly sent the government broke in the process. The Hawke government introduced HECS on the recommendation of a committee chaired, I think, by Neville Wran. It was their invention and it has become necessary. Touching on that area of education, I heard the shadow minister this morning saying that Australians now have to pay $100,000 and $200,000 for a full-fee position to the exclusion of those who are otherwise qualified for a HECS position. Yet most universities at the moment cannot fill their HECS positions, so where is the statistical support for that remark? Why can’t they fill them? Because it has suddenly become valuable to take other trade positions.

I have had a lot of work done on the university facilities in Geraldton in my electorate. The member for Werriwa complains about what he did not get in his electorate and what the member for Lindsay did—there might be some comparison there of the capacity of the two members to perform—but I took the initiative of getting some university places allocated to a town that had no university infrastructure or structure at all. The universities had to go up there and chase them, and they did. In a recent discussion with the universities as to the future of that situation, I suggested they should have special courses for the fly-in, fly-out people who live in that region so that on their week off they can start to upgrade their academic skills as mining engineers or something of that nature in a mixed sort of situation of face-to-face training and extension courses. These are the things that we are doing; we are combining with the community to get results. These technical education facilities certainly meet that criterion. (Time expired)

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