Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise not only to make a grievance speech but also to make a speech of grieving. My grievance relates to the skills crisis in New South Wales, in my home town of Bankstown and, indeed, in the whole of Australia. Over the last 10 years, training in the traditional trades and in broader areas has fallen way behind what is needed by the community, by New South Wales and by Australia. This government has failed dramatically in this area and it has chosen the easy path. Instead of, first and foremost, training young Australians now, the government has chosen the easy way of simply importing skilled people from overseas. The government has recently gone even further, saying that it will import skilled tradesmen not just through the normal processes of the skilled migration program—or through family migration if the person happens to be a skilled tradesperson as well as having family members here. The government has said it will also use the four-year temporary entry program, as it has done these past 10 years, to bring in more than 255,000 skilled tradespeople from overseas to supply a deficit that exists within Australia. In that time, 300,000 young people from Australia have not been able to find places in our technical and further education system.

The average age of tradespeople in Australia is 54 years. That is a pretty high age. I know it is lower than the age of Australian farmers, but it is significant that professional plumbers, drainers, carpenters and automotive mechanics are in that age bracket, about 10 years from normal retirement. People with experience in running their own businesses, working for others or working for large companies have known for many years that there are very few people beneath them to take their place. This mirrors the situation in our society at large—and the government has belatedly started to talk about the problem of the ageing of the population. Unless this tranche of skilled tradespeople choose to extend their working careers significantly—from their 60s, into their 70s and beyond—we will not be able to provide enough skilled tradespeople in Australia to keep the country running effectively.

The government has not invested in training our own people. It has chosen to bring people from overseas on a four-year TEP. And if, at the end of that four years, the people apply to stay in Australia, the government will give them discounted entry in order to supply the skills deficit. I do not think that is the right approach to take. I think it is extremely short-sighted. It is certainly an easier way to go than what this government has chosen to do, which is to concentrate on traineeships. Traineeships are greater in number than traditional apprenticeships, but they are discounted apprenticeships.

Traineeships are apprenticeships on the cheap. They are apprenticeships which can be completed faster and do not assist young people to develop the broad range of skills that they were once exposed to in the old apprenticeship training systems that the great institutions used to run. Now, because they are out of the game, those institutions do not train tradespeople in the significant numbers—indeed, the thousands—that Australia once had access to. I refer not just to workers in the public sector but to workers trained in the public sector who started their own businesses or moved into public or private companies either as independent contractors or as employees.

The State Rail Authority does not train people to the extent that it used to. Telstra certainly does not. It has fallen to the technical and further education system and, in part, to Australian schools to make up, in a patchwork way, for this deficit. But there is no driving force in the government—and there has not been for the past 10 years—to seek to solve the skills crisis that has grown inexorably over that period. They have instead sought to substitute by bringing in people to fill the temporary gap. This is extraordinarily shortsighted. As this has not been adequately addressed, Australia has significant problems due to the average age of its tradespeople. The people who make sure that the country ticks—those who fix our basic systems—are not there in significant numbers. The young people coming through have not experienced a broad enough approach to their training, in large part because the focus has been on employers seeking people with very narrow bands of experience. It has been neither extensive enough in time nor extensive enough in the kind of experience offered.

We face a particularly difficult problem in all of the building areas—indeed, across all of the trades. I am pleased that Labor, in its recent policy announcements, has not only recognised the depth of the skills crisis that faces us but pledged to create accounts to pay the fees of young people going to TAFE. Labor has also pledged to pay them a bonus on completion of their apprenticeships and will provide that people studying in areas of demand—in particular, the child-care area—get the same benefit. I think it is right to train young Australians first and to train them now, because that is an investment in our very future.

Recently I visited the Western Sydney Institute campus of TAFE at Chullora in Sydney’s south-west. I had a great experience of that institution in the past because the Chullora site was one of the great training institutes in Sydney when it was controlled by the State Rail Authority. Over the years its workshops produced skilled tradesmen in their thousands. Although the existing facility was finally wound down—despite a number of years of fighting on my part and on the part of the employees—it has now been transformed into a campus of TAFE. The Bankstown building and sheet metal facilities have been centralised there. The programs in the sheet metal area are particularly interesting.

The depth of the skills crisis is indicated by the fact that, before the young people who undertake training in apprenticeships at Chullora reach the end of their first year, 80 per cent of them are offered apprenticeships. The reason the number is so great is that the depth of demand is so great. It is terrific for the apprentices who take up those offers, but it is also an indicator of just how deep this crisis is. Not as many apprentices are taken up from the adjoining domestic building skills area. The reason is that there has been a drop-off in building in New South Wales. Another significant factor is the demand in those areas—the take-up rate is in the order of 45 to 50 per cent, but that is still a significant proportion of the entire volume.

A new and significant addition to the domestic carpentry area is being built. That is a large building which will allow the Chullora campus to train people in high-rise construction. So there will be both commercial and domestic carpentry—indeed, the very epicentre of training in carpentry and building in Sydney will be at the Chullora campus.

The young people lucky enough to gain access to skills in trades can seek apprenticeships and build a career for themselves in these very important areas where there is such a great deficit. I think it is terrific that they have done so well, but we need thousands upon thousands more of those students to go through the same types of courses not just in traditional areas but in a wider range of skills. We need a federal government that is committed to technical and further education for Australia and committed to solving the skills crisis that has been upon us these many years but has been underscored particularly in the last 10 years. (Time expired)