Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

While Labor will not oppose these bills, I want to speak on them today because they remind all of us of the work to be done to build a more equal society. And that work is education. Other speakers have spoken on the technical matters. I want to use my time to talk about the human face of these changes. I want to talk about Tom, Christine and Maggie, because education is not just good for the individual; it's good for all of us. It's the outcome of education that matters: knowledge, skills, opportunities and control over your life. These are the words of Michael Marmot. He goes on to say, 'Education is not a bad proxy for empowerment.' He's right. In Australia the best start is a postschool education—an apprenticeship, a traineeship, a degree. My dad was an engineer, a builder and a TAFE teacher and the first in his family to go to university. He told all of us kids that education was a great elevator in life. He's right.

I'll start by sharing Tom's story. He wrote to me recently. Tom's from Berkeley Vale, in my electorate, on the coast. His story is the story of TAFE. Tom said he left school in 1963 at the age of 15 after completing the intermediate certificate. Unfortunately, he failed maths 1, which was required to obtain an apprenticeship in fitting and machining. Fortunately, at the time, he could do that through TAFE. He completed and passed it in 1964. This set him on his way. He was then able to be apprenticed in a five-year apprenticeship, of which four years of education were required at Sydney Technical College. Incidentally, that's where my dad taught engineering. It's now called TAFE.

After completing his fitting-and-machining course Tom went on to acquire additional qualifications. Then he enrolled in a mechanical engineering certificate through TAFE. He completed this course in four years, part-time. Because of this he gained employment as a detail draftsman. He then advanced to become a senior design draftsman. He also finished an electrical welding certificate through TAFE, at Gosford Technical College on the Central Coast, while employed as a senior technical officer, at Eraring Power Station, with the Electricity Commission of New South Wales.

Tom said, 'I gained entry into Newcastle university with a 15-unit standing in mechanical engineering. I completed four units of maths in addition to the 15-unit standing but did not complete the degree. However, I would not have gained entry to the degree without the qualifications gained through TAFE.'

Tom's now retired on a good superannuation pension and says he owes it all to the TAFE system. He was employed by several companies in his working life and he has never had any trouble getting a job. Tom says: 'I owe all of this to the TAFE system in New South Wales.' For Tom, TAFE was the pathway to a fitting-and-machining apprenticeship, to a mechanical engineering certificate and to an arc welding certificate. With the right skills and training, Tom had a successful career and is now secure in his retirement. We were talking to his wife today and were told that he won lawn bowls—so he is very happy today. That's the type of security in retirement that every person deserves. Tom has that because of his career through TAFE and the superannuation scheme introduced by Labor.

Why is this government denying so many young people the opportunities that gave people like Tom his start in life? Tweaking the current system won't deal with the systemic problems in the VET system, nor will it deal with the inequities that have grown as student loans have ballooned and costs have been shifted onto young people, including apprentices like Tom and trainees. These bills remind us that this government really doesn't care enough to do the heavy lifting that needs to be done to build a better postschool system in Australia. Vocational education and training matters. It's good for the individual like Tom and it's good for our society as a whole.

Vocational education and training matters, particularly in electorates like mine on the New South Wales Central Coast, where the number of people who leave school to take up a trade is higher than in other areas. According to the latest census data, 57.7 per cent of people living on the Central Coast with post-secondary qualifications have vocational educational qualifications compared to the national average of 46.1 per cent. But this is the pathway that is being systemically undermined by conservative governments at a federal and state level.

This government has ripped more than $3 billion out of TAFE skills and training over the past five years. Cutting funding to TAFE is not just mean; it's bad economic policy. This government has presided over a drop of more than 140,000 apprenticeships and traineeships, and we will see significant skills shortages in the future, particularly in regional and rural areas. In towns and regional centres across Australia, TAFE campuses have been closed, courses have been scaled back and fees have been increased, putting them out of reach of many students. Nationally, there was a 30 per cent drop in government funded training at TAFE between 2013 and 2016. The training regulator, ASQA, openly recognises that the training market has created a 'race to the bottom', with fast-turnaround, poor-quality training putting enormous pressure on quality education and training providers like TAFE. VET FEE-HELP encouraged rorting, where predatory providers targeted students and saddled them with debt.

I now want to talk about another student, Christine. Christine recently contacted my office. She's undertaking a certificate III in pathology through a private provider in Parramatta. Christine is retraining after having a family and had previously worked as a nurse in pathology. Most of the course was offered online, with some face-to-face classes in Newcastle, and Christine turned in her assignments in Parramatta. Christine needs to complete one week's placement with a pathology clinic to finish the course. This was scheduled for November last year. The provider initially said that they couldn't find a placement. When they finally found one at Warners Bay, Christine drove there only to find out it hadn't been finalised. She believes that the pathology clinics won't deal with the provider due to malpractice. Christine has paid $6,000 for the course and wants and needs to complete it. Worse, Christine originally wanted to undertake the course through TAFE but couldn't as 60 people were competing for only 25 places. This government has stood by while corrupt for-profit training providers, like Careers Australia, reeled in hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money and left students like Christine with large debts and no qualification.

With the lowering of the VET FEE-HELP repayment threshold this financial year, students may get a surprise when they're asked to repay debts for which they've received no qualification, in some cases for courses they did not even realise they were enrolled in. I'll now turn to Maggie, because this is exactly what happened to her. She is one of my constituents. Maggie and her family moved to the Central Coast two years ago and Maggie found herself looking for work. When this took longer than she originally expected she considered upskilling to help to boost her chance of being able to land a job on the coast. She was searching for jobs online and she entered her contact details in a pop-up advertisement for Careers Australia. Almost immediately she got a phone call and was encouraged to enrol in a diploma of business administration. She didn't realise at the time that providing personal information, including her tax file number, was an enrolment, nor was she advised of any course fees for this diploma of business administration. Shortly after this phone call, Maggie found a full-time job. She didn't undertake any coursework with Careers Australia, wasn't aware she had been enrolled in a course with Careers Australia and tells me it took three attempts to then withdraw from the course. When she lodged her tax return, she discovered she had a debt of $9,439 for a course that she didn't intend to enrol in and hadn't undertaken.

The government has to act now. They have to act urgently. How can somebody like Maggie end up with a $9,439 debt for a diploma in business administration that she didn't intend to enrol in and then only found out that she was enrolled in when she lodged a tax return? This is just dodgy and it must be properly looked in to.

The answer to this is a strong TAFE. TAFE is of national importance. This government should fund TAFE to prepare Australians with the skills for a rapidly changing labour market. Instead they've designed a training fund that relies exclusively on a levy for skilled migrant visas. Independent analysis has established that the design of the Turnbull government's Skilling Australians Fund is flawed. If the number of visas goes down, so will funding for much-needed skills. Not surprisingly, for 12 months the states and territories have steadfastly refused to sign up to the government's Skilling Australians Fund.

This government's mishandling has meant that, since July 2017, the Commonwealth has contributed no money to replace the lapsed National Partnership Agreement on Skills. The Prime Minister doesn't appear to have any answer on jobs, skills, vocational education or TAFE. Now more than ever we need a post-education-and-training system that works for every Australian, particularly young people in rural and remote Australia.

In its first 100 days a Labor government will establish a once-in-a-generation commission of review into post-school education. The sweeping inquiry will look into every aspect of vocational and higher education to make sure that we can get the best response to the needs of Australia's economy and society. We don't want to see more people like Maggie and Christine ripped off by dodgy RTOs.

Labor will place TAFE at the centre of vocational education. Labor believes in TAFE. It's the backbone of skills and training in Australia. Labor has guaranteed secure funding for skills and TAFE and has made the commitment that at least two-thirds of public funding will go to the TAFE network. Only Labor will guarantee secure and stable skills-and-training funding by reversing the government's $637 million cut to the skills budget and by investing $100 million in rebuilding TAFE. Under Labor at least one in 10 workers on Commonwealth-funded projects will be an apprentice. That will make a difference in regional communities like mine.

On the Central Coast of New South Wales today, the youth unemployment rate is 18.6 per cent—18.6 per cent in a regional area that's an hour and a half north of Sydney and an hour south of Newcastle, two of Australia's leading cities. Every time I visit a classroom—and I was a student in classrooms on the Central Coast—I think one in five of those students will potentially be on the end of a job queue. That's not about talent. That's not about effort. That's a structural problem that leads to inequality and that's something that must be fixed. It's something that must be first acknowledged by the government and then properly addressed. Tweaking around the margins isn't going to fundamentally transform the vocational education system, and that's what young people and older people in Australia so desperately need. This government doesn't have a plan for education and training, it doesn't have a plan for Australia's future and it is clear that the Prime Minister has no plan for the future other than trying to save his job.

I'll go back to my opening remarks. I think it's something that we all need to think about in an increasingly unequal world, in a world where there's a widening gap between those that have and those that don't. I speak as someone who worked in mental health for most of my life and saw the consequences of government's decision or indecision, government's action or inaction, and the very real impact it has on people's lives.

I think that's something that we need to look at. We need to look beyond the numbers. What we need to look at is the real human face of these decisions and the consequences and the impact that they have on people, particularly younger people in regional and rural communities across Australia. That is because we know that, if we really want to have a more equal society in Australia, the work that we must do is in education.

As I said at the outset, education is not just good for the individual; it's good for all of us, and it's the outcomes of education that matter. It's the knowledge, it's the skills, it's the opportunities and it's the control over your life that really matter. In Australia, every young person deserves the best start in life. In order to have that, we need to have a properly funded, properly regulated, postsecondary education sector.

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