Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

When we consider the repeal of the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency, it is important that we appreciate the very good work done by staff since the establishment of Skills Australia, but I must say the reluctance of the opposition to defend elements of this agency are somewhat concerning. No doubt there was good intent within this agency—they produced some very important reports—but, with an increasing Public Service, can the nation afford to support yet another statutory authority operating independently of the department that was initially commissioned to simply do a job? The test should be: how often did the former government—and the member for Cunningham was part of that government—respond to the reports that were prepared by AWPA? The answer is: never! That is right—a big zero. This was a government quite prepared to set up statutory authorities, very willing to dream up acronyms, quite happy to see expansions of publicly funded high-rise buildings, water bubblers and the like, but, ultimately, it did not even formally respond to the very good reports prepared by AWPA. Rather than reading out names in a valedictory speech today by the opposition and commending union mates for a job well done, that should be the measure of affection Did they actually pick up the reports and did they read them? Did they respond to them?

AWPA did some important work, but, as I will argue today, that work has always been the job of our fine Department of Industry. It is a large and capable department which was actually commissioned to do such a job. We had a Labor administration that—whenever there was a speed bump somewhere or a napkin to be written on—would dream up a new agency. And that seemed to be done every week for the first couple of years of the Labor administration. Let it be recorded that we admired the good work of the staff at AWPA and we were impressed with the quality of their reports. But, in the end, you need to ask: are there other agencies out there prepared to write similar reports? Industry bodies should be writing these kinds of reports and university post-graduate facilities are perfectly placed to be informing these kinds of analyses.

Alas, what we had instead was a shuffle between 2009 and 2012 under former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to create new agencies. Why? It was to have a press conference, wasn't it? They would write a press release and, of course, everyone scurried around trying to work out the implications. Luckily for the former prime minister there were good people who picked up the press release and said, 'What will we do with it? Given these resources how can we best spend them for the nation's future?' For that reason, I really commend those at AWPA, but I do note that that original $2.6 million investment into Skills Australia soon ballooned out—it trebled. The commissioning was no greater, but by 2011 we had 53 staff and a trebling of the budget. I appreciate that gave opportunities to certain people to travel around the country doing PowerPoint presentations on industry requirements—and I know plenty of people turned up to listen—but, ultimately, we need to ask whether public funds are best used by simply expanding the Public Service and creating new bureaucracies? When I sense the lack of passion from the member for Cunningham, it is fairly clear that even the Labor Party is admitting that they probably went a step too far. They had almost run out of acronyms in creating so many authorities, but that is not for one moment to understate the great work done by individuals initially in Skills Australia and then at AWPA.

Clearly, the new government is going to streamline operations. Clearly, the new government is going to say: 'You're a department of industry. This is exactly what you are commissioned to do.' It is a new government that is going to say: 'If we need advice about industry, we are going to talk to industry.' What a revolutionary concept that would be!

Ultimately, they have said, 'We can merge back the activities of AWPA and ask the secretary'—that is right. What a revolutionary notion to actually commit the secretary of the department to provide the direct advice that is coming from their own department.

The new government will be supporting the Industry Skills Fund. That is common sense, isn't' it? The industry that is doing the training can seek public funds to perform private training for public benefit and get a co-contribution—that is right! What a novel concept that is for the Labor Party—a co-contribution: for every public dollar, the private sector puts in a dollar and says, 'This is training well worth doing.' The Industry Skills Fund will operate on merit. I am looking forward to businesses from all over the country picking up on the opportunity to train young Australians—which brings me to the skill shortage list.

AWPA did such a wonderful job maintaining this list over the years. It was commissioned with the task of looking after labour market issues, analysing education and training outputs and migration and general economic conditions. That is no simple task; I will concede that. Coming up with the SOL, or the Skilled Occupations List, was a very important job. In this contribution, I want to make a point about what the SOL truly is. The SOL is our failure list. It is the list of areas for which this nation never managed to provide adequate skilled labour and so look after the needs of this great country. Let us never forget that the SOL, where we basically find skilled independent migrants to do the work that we cannot train our own people to do, is fundamentally a policy failure. It is a failure we must continue to address and not to give up on by just making a bigger, longer list. The SOL was a very important job performed by AWPA. As I said, it was complex. It involved analysing a large number of sectors—labour market, education, training, the outputs from universities and employment needs. Those things change very rapidly. The ability of the department of immigration to meet those needs in a delicatessen-style 'take your number and wait' operation can mean real pain and genuine economic loss for business from those delays. So the Skilled Occupations List plays a very important role. It is also important to mention that the Consolidated Sponsored Occupation List, the CSOL, pertains to other migration categories and was not something that AWPA looked after.

What you will see with this bill, which I think even begrudgingly the opposition supports—as long as they can make the appropriate 'thankyous' and valedictories; and despite the proposed amendment, which I am yet to see—is that we now have a system where a government can turn to industry and ask them, 'What are the problems, and how do we fix them in a team based arrangement?' We do not need a raft of publicly funded individuals to do the job that the department should be doing.

It is the reports of AWPA which I am most impressed with. From their original incarnation as Skilled Australia they have produced reports: three reports in 2008, six reports in 2009, four in 2010 and, in 2011, they hit their straps with 11 reports—none of them were responded to by government. What was the minister doing? Were they too busy reading other stuff that was not prepared by an expert statutory body? There was no response to the 10 reports written in 2012 that sat on the minister's desk and collected dust. I respect the Left for their love of a large bureaucracy. I can understand it. From where they come from, they think that is how the world should work. But, for goodness sake, if you are going to devote millions of public dollars to funding a statutory authority, just respond to the report, just thumb through it, just read it—but there is no evidence that that ever happened. So, once you get this bureaucratic loss of control, these reports just cause the minister's eyes to glaze over; the minister does not even respond to them.

Former minister Cunningham is now talking about what a wonderful report was done last year. I simply ask her: 'So wonderful that your government did not respond to that report? It didn't bother to word-process just a couple of paragraphs about how that report actually informed decision making? No. What you saw in the Labor period was them utterly losing control of their own public administration. They were chasing up prime ministerial press releases and doing the best that they could with authorities who barely knew what their commission was. I have criticised many authorities in this place but I want to say that AWPA, through that period, managed to produce quality reports—and it is that that should be remembered in this contribution today.

Labor may attempt to amend this bill, but hidden behind it was that their idea of outsourcing ultimately became a public service that could have been done by others. The crowding out of the industry groups, universities and other technical bodies and the ability to specifically commission reports, which remains a job that government can do, was one that they forfeited and simply handed over to this body. For that reason, I strongly support the repeal of the bill. I am confident that the Department of Industry can pick up a significant number of those staff and virtually all of the activities which AWPA was engaged in. I commend the work that that body did while it was commissioned.

See this speech in context