Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Skills and Training) Share this | Hansard source

Labor is the party of education and of training. We know the power of education and training, which transform lives and transform communities. As the Minister for Skills and Training, I'm very proud of the work of this government, particularly that of the Minister for Education, to ensure that our tertiary education system—both university education and vocational education—is in the best shape for Australians now and well into the future.

The Australian Tertiary Education Commission is a key piece of the puzzle in this regard. This was, of course, a recommendation from the Australian Universities Accord, a blueprint that tells us about the kind of work that we need to get on with doing to set up the system for the next 20 years and those structural reforms that we need to pursue: building stronger links between vocational education and universities, allocating funding under the new Managed Growth Funding System, implementing needs based funding within the core funding model and negotiating mission based compacts to support the sector. Fundamentally, what the accord tells us is that, in the coming years, there will be more jobs requiring more skills and requiring vocational qualifications, higher education qualifications or both. Australia needs to grow the number of Australians with a tertiary qualification to four in five. To achieve this, we need to set the system up to meet the modern needs of Australians.

At the very core of this is breaking down those artificial barriers that have separated our university and vocational education systems. As I said at the National Press Club last year, these are 'a barrier to meeting the needs of our modern economy, and that contributes to skills mismatches and shortages in critical areas'. We can make it easier for Australians to get the right skills in whatever combination that might be, bring together the very best of both pathways that work for students and unlock the breadth of opportunities that will allow us to grow our country's productivity. This is where the ATEC can and will play an essential role.

In developing a tertiary roadmap, the ATEC will plot the next steps for those who seek to move between university and vocational education—a system to support students to gain qualifications that are matched to the skills needs across our diverse communities. It will build on and support the work that we already see progressing in the sector, like that of the University of Canberra and the Canberra Institute of Technology, who have introduced guaranteed pathways from diploma to degree across courses like nursing, early childhood education and care, accounting and project management. Similarly, the partnership between TAFE NSW and Western Sydney University is removing barriers for TAFE students entering into university degrees through a single enrolment package and putting in place appropriate student supports to make this as seamless as possible. TAFE NSW Meadowbank campus has forged a partnership with Macquarie University, Microsoft and the University of Technology Sydney to establish the Institute of Applied Technology Digital, a place for students to upskill and expand knowledge in cyber, AI, software and data analytics through bite-sized microskill courses and practical microcredential courses. It's great to see TAFEs and universities jumping at these opportunities, and it's this kind of forward thinking our government hopes to support through the ATEC.

On this note, I want to highlight an area of work in my portfolio responsibilities that I am proud of because it shows how we can break down these barriers in practice. This is through TAFE centres of excellence. There are 14 of these which have been announced so far, and there are more on the way, bringing together governments, TAFEs, universities, industry and other stakeholders to develop specialised courses and skills in areas of priority for our country: modern forms of housing construction, electric vehicles, cybersecurity, health care and support, and net zero manufacturing. We're already seeing the work of these centres of excellence in action and making a difference, like the TAFE centre of excellence for the future of housing construction, which last year welcomed its first group of students participating in a pilot program to learn how to apply modern methods of construction. The short course introduces students to prefabrication, modular construction and volumetric construction.

Learning isn't here only for those on site who are benefiting from newly refurbished spaces. What sets the centres of excellence apart is how they are equipped to share their specialisations with students and teachers across the country, as the national TAFE network will also help us do—a network now including all Australian jurisdictions. Even if you're a student in Perth, you can readily benefit from the incredible courses and training and the knowledge that's been on offer in suburban Melbourne—and the other way around, too. It's a more joined-up and a more practically-oriented tertiary system in action, bringing together the extraordinary capacity of our TAFEs with a closer and more structured connection to higher education as well as industry. In Queensland, the TAFE Centre of Excellence Clean Energy Batteries and the Centre of Excellence Health Care and Support have launched the first round of applied research grants, bringing together TAFEs with universities, industry and community orgs to develop innovative new training in these critical fields. This is a big part of the future of tertiary education.

The interim ATEC has been operating for just over seven months now, and, subject to the passage of the legislation we are debating right now, its early work will soon be scaled up as it approaches full operations. With that in mind, I pay tribute to the extraordinary efforts of the interim commission over this early foundational period. In the first six months of its time, the interim ATEC was led by Professor Mary O'Kane AC as interim chief commissioner and Distinguished Professor Larissa Behrendt AO as interim First Nations commissioner, supported by Professor Barney Glover AO as the jobs and skills commissioner.

I'm very pleased that Professor Glover will be able to continue his contribution, having stepped into the interim chief commissioner role. As jobs and skills commissioner, Professor Glover brought his decades of experience and leadership to the work of Jobs and Skills Australia—a critically important body that's not only conducting research and bringing together data but also helping us all to understand how it informs the future need of our workforce and the skilling needs of Australians. As I've spoken about previously, JSA research has highlighted how a more connected tertiary education system can lift productivity and the skill level of our workforce, and that better connections also help improve access to tertiary education, ensuring we grow the pipeline of Australians stepping into a certificate, a diploma or a degree. This work crosses over with the work of the interim ATEC, and I look forward to continuing to work with Professor Glover in these areas.

Alongside him are two new interim commissioners: the Hon. Fiona Nash, someone well known to this place and someone who is continuing to contribute to public life in the education sector, doing valuable work that is widely acknowledged as regional education commissioner; and, of course, Professor Tom Calma, who is the acting First Nations commissioner and someone who brings decades of experience in higher education, amongst other fields—a genuinely eminent Australian.

The future success of this great country in large part rests on the success of our education and training system, and its ability to meet the needs of Australians and of Australia. This isn't and cannot be a set-and-forget proposition because we can't anticipate all the changes we will see in 10 or 20 years' time. But we can act now to enable the system to work better for students today and into the future, so that their learning journeys can reveal their full potential and that our national potential can be unleashed. For those reasons, I commend these bills to the House.

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