Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great privilege to be able to make a contribution to this, because I have a number of children and I am a supporter of TAFE. Yes, you heard it. I'm a supporter of TAFE, but the system is broken. I do agree that, as a nation, we need to be training the tradespeople, the apprentices and the trainees to build the infrastructure that our country needs, and, at the moment, this government is failing.

When we left office, four years ago, there were 412,000 apprenticeship trainees in the system. Today, under this government's management, do you think the numbers have gone up with fee-free TAFE, or have they dropped? I can report to the House they are down by 100,000—that's over 100,000 fewer. It's great to bring motions into the House and espouse fee-free TAFE, but you need to be able to back it up with outcomes. We are not in dispute. There are fewer apprenticeships and trainees today. My family attended TAFE. I was fortunate enough to have a tertiary education, but, for the boilermaker and tradie relatives of mine that went to TAFE, I remember it being an institution that was held in high regard.

I'm going to ask the people in the gallery a question about the completion rates for the trades that we need to build this country—the electricians, the carpenters, the boilermakers or any trade that you can think of in the TAFE system as it stands today. What do you think are the completion rates for construction sector apprenticeships in Australia at the moment? What's the percentage? Is it 80 per cent? Is it 50 per cent? Would you be surprised to hear—it beggars belief that they would bring this motion into the House when they were armed with this data—that the completion rate in the construction sector at TAFE colleges right across the country is 8.37 per cent? That is shameful.

We want to fix this. We need to fix this. Our country needs both sides of this House to work together to fix it, and fee-free TAFE is something that, when in office, we will need to adjust because these figures are not sustainable. Where they are, where the TAFE system is excelling—and I want to throw a bouquet to them—is in the care sector. Just under 30 per cent of people in the system studying care have completed their courses. Bravo, we need those people. With an ageing population, we need to be making sure that we've got the training skills to be able to look after the requirements we have into the future.

But it's not just about focusing on fee-free TAFE. When you have a look at why we've got less than 10 per cent completions in the construction sector, you only have to look at the construction sector's record insolvencies under this government's regulation and red tape on business. The cost is spiralling out. We have amazing inflation data which puts upward pressure on interest rates, and they, rather than addressing all the other underlying core problems and why we've got record insolvency problems in the construction sector, come into the House and say: 'Oh, we've got the answer. We don't have to look at all the other underlying problems that the government has created.'

The Reserve Bank governor clearly said that the inflation issues in this country are homegrown. That means they can be fixed. TAFE is an institution that needs our support. TAFE is an institution that I want to see returned to an institution held in high regard, but we need to change the completion rates. Having a cert II in bushwalking skills or a certificate in guiding is not going to help build the infrastructure that our country requires. It's only this side of the House that will put a broom through the TAFE system and make it great again.

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