Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Perth has moved as an amendment that all words after ‘That’ be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to be back on my scrapers to continue my remarks, which were so rudely interrupted by question time! As we know, the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006 proposes to bring forward funding for the 25 Australian technical colleges that the Commonwealth has committed itself to building. We understand through the bill that the total level of funding for the ATCs remains the same.

I am pleased to be able to support these minor changes. However, I cannot say that I am happy with the way the government has handled such a crucial area as education, and I am not impressed by the way it has failed to address the skills shortage by investing in Australia’s future. I do not believe that this legislation will deliver the goods; it certainly will not deliver the goods for people in my electorate. What these amendments do is to highlight the inability of the government and its complete lack of commitment to education within this country. This ineptitude is being felt most particularly in regional and remote Australia and in my electorate of Lingiari, which has large numbers of isolated Aboriginal communities, pastoral properties and mining towns. I welcome the opportunity to speak on the legislation and emphasise the particular areas of concern faced within my own electorate.

We are told by the government that the proposed technical colleges—only five of which have been opened—would be located in areas with a high youth population, skills needs and in regions supported by a significant industry base. Whilst my electorate certainly fits these criteria, there is no commitment to a technical college being developed in this area. In fact, there has been very little investment at all in the sorts of services and infrastructure needed to provide vocational education and training and to address the skills shortages and education needs in my own electorate.

What we instead see, sadly, is the historical neglect of the education needs of the many people who make up my electorate, particularly where they live in remote parts of it. I know this to be true of other parts of Australia, particularly in the north. In 2005, the Northern Territory government, with industry, held a conference entitled ‘2015: Moving the Territory Ahead’. It was told that the regional economies were suffering as the Darwin economy boomed. In December 2006, the Northern Territory Construction Association stated that these skills shortages were leading to business closures, despite a booming economy. In addressing this critical concern the conference delegates stated that there was a crucial need to involve Indigenous Australians in the answer. The Workforce NT report for 2005 notes:

The NT economy is predicted to continue to strengthen over the next few years with increasing exploration resource development, continuation of major project construction activities and a strengthening tourism market. In the current climate where skills shortages exist across a wide range of occupations, it is reasonable to assume that demand for skilled workers and the demand for labour will continue at both the local and national level.

We know from the most recent Northern Territory occupation shortage list that there are shortages in around 80 occupations. A significant proportion of these are in the trades.

The Workforce NT document reports on the results of an NT wide survey of industry and business conducted by six training advisory committees. Across the Territory 53 per cent of businesses reported difficulty in recruiting staff. The most difficulty was experienced in the central region, where 65 per cent of businesses reported difficulty, followed by the Barkly region, with 59 per cent. Tradespersons and related workers were the most difficult group of workers to recruit, reflected by 34 per cent of responses. Labourers and related workers follow, with 13 per cent of responses; clerical and service workers, with 12 per cent; and professionals, with 12 per cent.

The report profiles the specific skills shortages suffered in each of the Territory’s regions. The report found that, in the East Arnhem region, the most common occupation with a shortage was tradespeople, with 35 per cent of responses, and the common reason given for this was ‘a general skills shortage’, with 39 per cent of responses. The most common occupations experiencing shortages were motor mechanics, cleaners, electricians, seafarers, fishing hands and sales assistants. In the Katherine region, the figures were very similar, with 30 per cent of responses saying that there was a shortage of tradespersons. The most common reason given, again, was ‘a general skills shortage’, with 55 per cent of responses. Again, in similar fashion, the most common workers identified as being in short supply were farm hands, nursery and garden labourers, motor mechanics and sales assistants. In the Barkly region, again, 50 per cent of responses said there was a shortage of tradespersons and 63 per cent of responses said the reason for this was ‘a general skills shortage’. The most common occupations identified were that of motor mechanics, other tradespeople and registered nurses. In the central region, the most common occupations in shortage were tradespeople, with 40 per cent of responses, and the most common reason give, again, was ‘a general skills shortage’, with 51 per cent of responses. The most common occupations identified as having a shortage of labour were those of electricians, motor mechanics, sales assistants, carpentry and joinery tradespersons and cleaners.

The shortage of skills in the Territory is, of course, exacerbated by the growth in economic activity that the Territory economy is experiencing. The Access Economics five-year outlook released last month predicts strong growth in the Territory economy of between five per cent and 6.5 per cent over the next three years, no doubt strongly driven by the commodity boom across northern and Western Australia. Indeed, much of the economic activity that is a result of the commodity boom is based in regional parts of the Territory, in my own electorate. What is unfortunate is that the impressive rates of growth and low levels of unemployment predicted in the Access Economics outlook are not being fully enjoyed in the communities that exist within this area of such vibrant economic activity.

In the regions I earlier identified in my own electorate, there is a significant Indigenous population, with 38 per cent of the population of Lingiari being Aboriginal people. One of the defining characteristics of this population is that they are disproportionately youthful when compared with the rest of the population, and they have very high fertility rates. Forty per cent of Australia’s Indigenous population is aged 14 years or younger, compared with only 20 per cent of the non-Indigenous population.

I have said in this chamber a number of times that the most crucial factor bearing upon the ability of these people to participate in the labour market is a lack of education opportunities. I have pointed out many times in this place that there are literally thousands of young Territorians who live in my electorate who have no access at all to any high school education opportunities or vocational education opportunities. It is within that context that I note the remarks made by various ministers during the course of question time today. You will recall, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations made the following comments. Firstly, he said that ‘the best welfare that we can provide to Australians is a job’. He later said that giving Australians a career in an Australian workplace is what they are about.

Then, of course, we had the Minister for Vocational and Further Education talking about skill shortages. He was saying something which we all know: the demand for skills will continue. He said that the government has a plan to address skill shortages—referring to these technical colleges—and keep the economy strong. Then we had the Minister for Education, Science and Training talking about the need for quality education. I wonder if they actually sat down and had a conversation together whether they could work out a solution to the problems in my electorate. Clearly there is a disjointed approach to how to address the skill shortages in this country. Clearly there is a disjointed approach about how to address the needs of people who live in regional and remote Australia and who are not afforded the opportunity to go to technical colleges because they do not exist there.

Nothing in this legislation will assist a single person in my electorate to attend a technical college, because there is not one there. In any event, even if there were, a substantial proportion of the population would not be able to get access to it because they would not have the fundamental skills to get entry. Why do they not have the fundamental skills to get entry? Because they do not have access to a quality education. Why do they not have access to a quality education? Because, sadly, since at least 1978 until 2001, successive conservative governments in the Northern Territory took conscious decisions not to invest in educational infrastructure in the bush. As a result, we now have at least three generations of Territorians—some of them are clearly not young any more—who have been denied access to proper education opportunities.

It is all very well for this government to come in here and parade what it sees as its values about the importance of quality education and the importance of providing people with career opportunities and jobs, but they fail the test because none of the decisions that they have taken in this legislation will provide opportunities for these Australians who live in remote parts of the Northern Territory. Of course, the three ministers who I referred to earlier all make bland statements about what this country is on about and about what they are trying to do in terms of real welfare.

It could well be true that providing people with real jobs is the best welfare, but I wonder if the minister responsible would talk to the minister for education and say, ‘Listen, if I am going to give these young Aboriginal kids in the Northern Territory access to jobs in the broader labour market, they need an education.’ Then, when he has done that, he might well go over to the other minister who got up at the table here and paraded his virtue and say to him: ‘Mate, if we want to give these young kids apprenticeships, you have to provide them with those vocational education opportunities in the bush. It is not much good to them if it is in Darwin.’

My electorate is 1.34 million square kilometres in area. The city of Darwin and Palmerston form the electorate of Solomon, which is 334 square kilometres. You do not have to be Einstein to work it out. The town of Alice Springs is the major service centre for a very large region—about one-third of the Northern Territory. Do you think they have any technical and further education opportunities provided through this legislation? They have zero. What opportunities do all those young kids who live in the northern part of South Australia, the eastern part of Western Australia or the southern part of the Northern Territory and who see Alice Springs as their major service centre get out of this legislation? Not a jot—not one single opportunity.

Let us not have ministers come into this place belting their chests, parading their virtue and saying how well they are doing when, in fact, they are doing abysmally. And whilst I am happy to support the meagre impact this legislation will make in assisting with Australia’s skill shortage by providing some opportunities for some people in some parts of Australia, I say to the government: you have failed the test and you continue to fail the test. You do not understand, nor do you care, about providing those Australians who are most disadvantaged and most need an opportunity in life with that opportunity. You have taken conscious decisions not to do it.

We know that if we are actually going to do something about this that we have to do something reasonable. I talked about the Indigenous community in the Northern Territory. Over 83 per cent of the Indigenous population aged 15 or over live in remote parts of the Territory—that is, in my electorate. According to the Workforce NT Report, they typically have:

• high rates of disengagement from the labour market
• high rates of employment through Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP)
• declining mainstream employment ...

If you profile this population, and if you understand this population, you do not have to be too smart to work out why they cannot get a job. Not only is the labour market an issue, and not only do this government not understand the small-area labour markets that exist across the Northern Territory; they also do not understand their obligation—nor do they acknowledge their obligation—to provide these Australians with a similar opportunity to that which they want to provide to other Australians in other areas, such as Western Sydney or even Darwin. The people in my electorate have the right to these opportunities just like other Australian citizens have. This legislation will not provide them with that opportunity.

This legislation does not go nearly far enough. I say to members opposite: we have to do a damn sight more if we are going to fill the gap which now prevails in the bush and give these young Australians a real opportunity. In 1996, when I was parliamentary secretary for employment, I was responsible for promoting and funding a skills analysis to look at skills shortages in the Northern Territory and across the north of Australia. What did that analysis tell us? It told us that skills were short. We know that, but it exemplified the huge potential pool of labour in the north of Australia which is not being accessed because they are being ignored. Now, report after report has exemplified exactly what I have been saying. Industry knows that there are skills shortages. They need their carpenters, they need their electricians, they need their fitters in the mining industry. They cannot get them.

What we have seen, despite the lack of effort by government, is industry taking up the cudgel. The mining industry, particularly in the case of Argyle, has taken a deliberate approach to make sure that the labour which they employ in that community is largely from the local population. They have changed the way they operate. They have gone out to the community and said: ‘We will help you to get training. We understand the need for this educational opportunity. We will give you the opportunity, we will train you for a job and we will give you a job.’ That is what this government needs to understand. It needs to see that it has an obligation to work with communities and provide the people with real opportunities. This legislation does not do nearly enough in terms of providing technical and further education opportunities for people who live in remote parts of Australia, particularly in my electorate. It is a shame. The government needs to do a damn sight better. (Time expired)

Ken Ticehurst (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a result of strong industry and community support, 21 of the 25 Australian technical colleges are expected to be in operation in 2007, which is well ahead of the schedule announced at the 2004 election. This has resulted in additional costs over a five-year period, which this bill seeks to address. The Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006 will increase the total funding for the ATC initiative from $343.6 million to $456.2 million—an increase of $112.6 million over the period from 2006 to 2009.

While it is fantastic that youth in many parts of the country will have the option of this flexible approach to education and training sooner than anticipated, I must express my disappointment and frustration that the technical college in my electorate of Dobell has been held up because of the New South Wales Labor government’s continual political games. The Central Coast ATC would have been up and running in 2007 had it not been for the New South Wales Labor government delaying the granting of a licence. I understand this has also occurred in other electorates in New South Wales and in Western Australia. But we all know what Labor does when it is threatened by good policy: it stands in the way and denies communities of important projects.

The Australian government and Central Coast industries are working together to provide and promote technical training for youth across the whole region, while the New South Wales government tries to stifle these moves—purely for political gain. The local New South Wales Department of Education and Training have been very cooperative and they understand the need to work together to avoid an unnecessary duplication of facilities. However, I understand that the New South Wales Labor government is now refusing to sign a memorandum of understanding to provide the education component for the project, adding further delays to the project. We all know that Labor has a limited grasp of the technical college concept and how valuable it will be for areas with a high youth population and a rapidly growing employment base. It cannot seem to grasp that the technical college initiative will serve to complement TAFE, rather than duplicate it, by providing young Australians with the opportunity to commence their training in a traditional trade through a school based apprenticeship at certificate III level while at the same time completing academic subjects leading to their year 12 certificate.

The additional funding in the bill will provide a capacity for ATCs to provide high levels of support to both students and the employers who engage students as Australian school based apprentices. This is another initiative that the New South Wales Labor government has held up for so long, denying thousands of young people in New South Wales opportunities, options and a say in their future. Instead, state Labor attempted to fool Australians with hollow promises and trade schools, which are nothing like the Australian Government’s ATCs, as they do not offer trade training to certificate III and certificate IV level.

One of the best things about these technical colleges, and something that really sets them apart from other VET initiatives, is their flexibility. Each college has been encouraged to pursue a model that best meets the needs of the region in which it is established. Students and employers are attracted by this flexibility. Employers are able to influence the curriculum to ensure their apprentices are work-ready, and students are able to undertake on-the-job training at times that suit their employer. Students can also work towards two qualifications at once. One student commented that he had been trying to decide whether to stay at school and complete his senior certificate or to start an apprenticeship. He was over the moon when he heard that he could combine the two. This flexibility has resulted in the operational costs necessary to get each college up and running being higher than expected. These costs vary from college to college because every operational model is different. In my electorate of Dobell, on the Central Coast, trade qualifications are vital. In fact, I have recently been involved in a Central Coast apprentice drive with a local organisation called Central Coast Group Training, and we have been working to encourage businesses to take on apprentices, with great results. The plan was to employ one apprentice or trainee per day for 30 days. This program has been running for two weeks, and so far 15 new trainees have been signed on. They are handling about 150 apprentices and trainees currently and they are tied in to make that 200 during this year.

The abolition of technical schools by the states many years ago has meant that over the past few decades our young people have lacked training and skills pathways. The price we have paid is the severe trade skill shortages we are currently experiencing in many of our key industries. Indeed, when I went to school at Granville we had a technical high school there. Technical high schools existed in many other suburbs around Sydney. Many kids learned a lot of their hands-on trades at school.

Those schools no longer exist; they were abandoned by Labor. Labor pursued higher education and just forgot the skills that were really needed to keep this country going. This is why the establishment of technical colleges is vital for the Central Coast. While take-up of places at the University of Newcastle’s Central Coast campus is higher than ever, there are an exceeding number of students in years 11 and 12 on the coast who do not want to go on to university but want to study trades.

Residents and businesses on the Central Coast are grateful that our local area has been chosen to house one of the 25 technical colleges. The good thing about this technical college and why it is a revolution for our young people is the way they are getting trade training. The college is industry-led, which means local employers in the region are working with education providers to establish a college that responds directly to the needs of local industry, resulting in students making a smooth transition into the workplace and local areas having access to a supply of highly qualified workers who will be trained according to local industry requirements.

The Central Coast Manufacturers Association is doing a fantastic job to get the ATC under way and has been fully supported locally by association members including Albany International, Sara Lee, ADC Krone, Gibbens Industries, Masterfoods, Adhesives Research, Gosfern, Thermit Australia and Pacific Labels. These industries are further supported by the involvement of Australian Business Ltd, the Master Builders Association, the NRMA and the Gosford District Chamber of Commerce and Industry, just to name a few. On the Central Coast, trade training will be offered in the engineering trades, construction, electro-technology, automotive trades and commercial cookery.

The bill takes into account that in some cases a newly established school will be the most effective delivery model to meet their regional needs. The ATCs also need to ensure students are trained using the latest tools and equipment. While all ATCs have been encouraged to work closely with existing training providers, including TAFE, to utilise existing infrastructure in their region, the ATCs have in some cases been required to contribute funding for this infrastructure to be refurbished or upgraded.

Recently Mr Lester Searle, who was the campus director for the Wyong and Gosford TAFE, gave me an extensive tour of the facilities at Wyong. It was encouraging to see that facilities for commercial cookery and plumbing were really superior, and very few institutions in the area had anything like it. In fact, the plumbing school is probably one of two or three in the state. We really need to make sure that these facilities are not duplicated. Indeed, the ATCs can provide a training ground and provide a student feed into these TAFEs.

The Australian government is committed to building a nation in which high-quality technical education is as valued as a university qualification. Some 70 per cent of young people do not go directly from school to university and many choose to undertake vocational and technical education and apprenticeships. The Australian government values and respects these choices. The Australian technical colleges initiative is just one of a range of vocational and technical education initiatives that the Australian government is delivering during 2006 to 2009.

In fact, this government’s investment over that period will total more than $11.3 billion, the biggest commitment to vocational and technical education by any government in Australia’s history. The investment includes $781 million over five years from the Skills for the Future package, which is 93 per cent of the total funding; helping to ease the early financial burden on apprentices by providing apprentices starting an eligible apprenticeship with: a tool kit worth up to $800; a $1,000 Commonwealth trade learning scholarship, with $500 paid at the successful completion of each of the first and second years of an apprenticeship in an eligible trade with a small or medium size business; an extension of the living away from home allowance to third-year apprentices who have moved away from home to take up or remain in an apprenticeship; and $10.6 million over four years to extend incentives for employers of higher level apprentices in key growth areas.

Australia is proud to have a world-class training system which many countries around the world try to emulate. The Australian government is committed to maintaining our high-quality training system by focusing on flexibility and being responsive to industry needs. I urge the New South Wales government to forget 24 March and sign the MOU so that duplication on the Central Coast will not be needed. The Australian technical colleges initiative is part of a long-term plan by the Australian government to build the status and prestige of the trades, to address the barriers to trade training in the school system and to ensure that the nation can better plan and meet the needs of trade industries in the future.

At this point I would like to congratulate Gary Hardgrave, the previous minister, whom I worked very closely with over the years to establish this Central Coast ATC in conjunction with other training for apprentices. I commend this bill, which will give young people in my electorate the chance to study at an Australian technical college and get a head start in their working lives.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006. The purpose of this bill is to provide additional funding of $112.6 million over the years 2005 to 2009 for the establishment and operation of the Australian technical colleges, as costs for the colleges have blown out beyond expectation.

The Australian technical colleges provided the Howard government with the political cover it needed to create the perception that it is addressing the skills crisis in Australia. Fixing the skills crisis is essential if the Australian economy is to continue to prosper and grow; however, the reality is that the Australian technical colleges are yet to train one young Australian in a traditional trade.

Coming from an electorate that has a teenage unemployment rate of over 20 per cent, I see first hand the very human costs as well as economic costs of the Howard government’s failure to address Australia’s skills crisis and to train young Australians in traditional trades. The failure of the government to come up with an effective policy response to Australia’s skills crisis is increasingly impacting on skills training, innovation and industry, particularly manufacturing, in my electorate. We cannot rely on the resources boom indefinitely. To compete globally, Australia must become a skilled and highly trained economy.

While the government is more than happy to take the credit for the economic good times, it is doing nothing to assure Australia’s economic strength will continue into the future. The government has been in office for 10 years, but what has it been doing to address these issues? It has failed to provide the required opportunities for Australians to access training that will ensure their future employment and ensure that the future skills needs of this country are met.

Nothing better highlights the Howard government’s ineptitude than its management of the Australian technical colleges. As a policy, the Australian technical colleges are much more about providing political cover than about providing a practical policy solution to the skills crisis. The ATCs were announced in the context of the 2004 election campaign and they were pretty much a political quick fix rather than an actual policy solution. The reality is that the Howard government announced a policy that sounded good in the context of an election campaign, largely in response to Labor’s criticism over its lack of action on skills, but for which there was no policy work done and little idea as to how to implement it.

The policy has limped along ever since. The demise of the former minister responsible for this area largely reflects his failure to implement the Australian technical colleges—a failure that is to some extent not really his fault. It is a policy that has been destined to fail from the start because, instead of working cooperatively with the states on the existing longstanding system of trade training provided via TAFE, the Howard government has set up an alternative system—talk about creating duplication, wasting scarce resources, failing to use federal funding to build and leverage additional funding from states and other registered trading organisations, introducing inefficiency and failing to maximise opportunities for trade training for young people!

Australian technical colleges were billed as a solution to the projected shortfall of 100,000 skilled workers by 2010. Of the proposed 25 Australian technical colleges, how many are actually open and operating today? There are five of them. Of the promised 7½ thousand students to be enrolled and working towards their trade in a school based apprenticeship, how many are actually enrolled today? It has been more than two years since the ATC policy was first announced but, as at December last year, there were only five colleges up and running. That is the advice from the government’s own website advertising the college system. Those five ATCs, the Gold Coast, Gladstone, Port Macquarie, Eastern Melbourne and Northern Tasmania, account for fewer than 350 enrolments. This figure looks even more pitiful when the Port Macquarie ATC—which is really a rebadged vocational college that had existing enrolments—with 205 enrolments is taken into account. Even if the implementation of the Australian technical colleges had not been bungled and could meet its target of 7,500 students by 2010, it would be too little and far too late to address Australia’s skills crisis.

I supported the original bill in this place which introduced the colleges because investing in trades and technical education is of critical importance both to the individuals involved and to the Australian economy. I supported the original bill to establish the colleges despite the lack of detail available and despite the flaws in the government’s proposal because, frankly, on this side of the House we were relieved that the government was at least trying to do something about the skills crisis.

We will support this bill because getting more money into the system of technical education is critical to addressing our skills crisis, but the government has taken entirely the wrong approach. I believe this money could be spent to far greater effect if it was channelled into existing state structures and registered training organisations. There has been continued criticism from the sector about the Howard government’s decision to not use the TAFE network or even other existing registered trading organisations as the basis of the Australian technical colleges system. The state governments and TAFE have tried and tested structures already established with the experience to make use of any additional funding immediately. Instead of establishing an opposing structure, it would have been more practical and effective to work within existing and more established structures. If the government has criticism of TAFE then why doesn’t it work to improve it instead of bypassing it by creating an opposing system?

In Ballarat we were pretty disappointed to see that we were not considered for one of the Australian technical colleges in the original allocation—not because we desperately wanted one of the government’s ATCs but because we would have been grateful and grabbed with both hands the opportunity to access federal funding to address our skills crisis and our high teenage unemployment rate. We have been screaming for assistance on this issue in Ballarat for some time. The skills crisis is a particular concern to the Committee for Ballarat, the Central Highlands Area Consultative Committee and the City of Ballarat, who have been working on this issue for some time. There are simply not enough individuals in traditional trades and there is a high youth unemployment rate, which is running at around 20 per cent in my electorate, particularly for those young people aged 15 to 19.

In our region we would welcome federal funding to assist us with trade training, but the government needs to take into account that the Bracks Labor government has already stepped up to the plate in the federal government’s absence in this respect. Working within established and existing structures, a new Ballarat Technical Education Centre, funded by the state government, will commence operating from the University of Ballarat’s SMB TAFE Division midyear. Implementation is already well under way and a structure, curriculum and enrolment system has already been developed with local schools and businesses. There will be an initial intake of 75 students, who will use the SMB campus’s existing facilities at Lydiard Street South. I also note the $12 million commitment to the new building and construction facility at that campus, which is just about completed and due to be opened, and was again funded by the state Labor government.

The Ballarat TEC will initially offer courses in building and construction and automotive and engineering before moving into a new purpose-built facility on the campus in 2008, and work is already underway on building that campus. The intake is expected to rise to 300 students when the new facility opens.

In Ballarat we already have a strong VET and VCAL in-schools program. Our schools have been working closely with TAFE on the implementation of the technical education centres. We have terrific secondary colleges. Sebastopol College, which used to be Sebastopol Technical School, after years of declining enrolment now provides a huge range of options for the young people who go there. Whether the kids from there go into university, stream into TAFE, go into arts or go into their own businesses, there is room for everyone at Sebastopol College. It is seen as one of the most desirable schools in my electorate. Sebastopol College, Mount Clear College, Ballarat Secondary College and Ballarat High School have for some time been offering pathways into trade and vocational education and training. These colleges are working closely with the TAFE on the technical education centre.

They have specialised in areas where they know that they have strengths. There is transportability of kids between the four secondary colleges if they do not have the equipment or the training for a particular trade, and our non-government schools are also taking advantage of the vocational education experiences offered by our government schools.

Our schools, TAFE, registered training organisations and the state government have invested in upgrading equipment for vocational training, and they provide that training to many private schools in my electorate. We of course could always do with more, and again it would be a more appropriate use of ATC funding in our district if it were directed toward the upgrading of technical facilities within our existing secondary system rather than establishing a duplicate system.

One of the other criticisms that many of the people who have been involved in technical education for a long time is that the Australian technical colleges take young people way too late. They really need to start capturing young people at a much earlier age, and all of the evidence suggests that that is what they should be doing. Certainly, one of the issues that the technical education centre is addressing with schools is how it can work within the VCAL and VET systems. It is also looking at how we can actually stream people at a younger age than that offered by the Australian technical colleges.

Our schools have been working very closely with the department of education, the local TAFE, other training providers, local industry and the local learning exchange—another fantastic facility that we have in Ballarat that is used by both government and non-government school students. It allows people to train in areas such as film, sound and lighting, and office management. If anyone gets the opportunity to come to Ballarat they will see it really is a shining example of a learning centre that provides technical education to government and non-government schools.

All of these schools have been working very hard. In the announcement I understand that the government will make on Monday about 15 new technical education centres, I hope that Ballarat is considered by the government for ATC funding. However, the government would be entirely wasteful and inefficient if it did not put that money into existing structures such as the technical education centre and our vocational education system. If on Monday the government decides to put the money there rather than attempting to introduce a complicated new system of technical education to Ballarat, we will certainly welcome that and I will be one of the first people out there welcoming the funding into Ballarat. But if there is to be a completely new, duplicate structure within Ballarat, I can tell the government now that it will fail. It will not actually improve training and technical education in my community if it is not able to work cooperatively with the existing system and complement the large amount of funding that has been allocated to our technical education centre from the state government.

I also want to mention two other training initiatives operating in my electorate. In my own electorate—and, I know, in many other electorates—we have been running the Mindshop Excellence program for some time. It is in essence a trade taster program, but it is quite unique. It has actually been running as part of the Australian Industry Group’s ‘Manufacturing 31 Days’. It used to be ‘Manufacturing Week’. The Mindshop Excellence program is a great example of what you can do. It takes young people into the manufacturing sector, and they get to experience not just trades across the manufacturing sector but also the real-life problems that are faced by the manufacturing sector. They are asked to workshop and come up with innovative solutions for those problems. These young people are integrated absolutely into the businesses and learn what manufacturing can offer them.

They get to come away, provide a presentation to leaders in the local community and present the solutions to companies such as FMP, McCain and MasterFoods. It provides people with a real taste of what it is like to be in a trade but, more specifically, in a trade in manufacturing. I certainly think the program is worth looking at as a trade taster program. It provides an excellent base for young people, particularly in terms of manufacturing, and it is certainly something that Labor will look at very seriously.

I think this, alongside our TAFE’s active participation in the World Skills program, puts Ballarat at the forefront of technical education across Victoria. We are very proud that many of our young people have gone on to represent our area in state, national and international finals and also that they are fantastic tradespeople in our local community.

While I support the additional funds going into technical education that are represented in this bill, all this bill really does is draw attention to the spectacular policy failure of Australian technical colleges and the woeful response to our skills crisis that has characterised the 10 long years of the Howard government. The policy was totally bereft of substance in the first place. It failed to address important issues relating to incentives for students to complete training or to gain meaningful employment following training. We are now seeing the results of that.

Where was the foresight to ensure that enough young people were supported to fulfil their training requirements in the first place and to graduate as skilled workers? Where was the government’s policy on enhancing relationships between employer groups and trade training colleges to ensure appropriate employment at the end of training? Where was the commitment to work with states and territories to achieve the skilled worker goals that this nation must have to compete with the rest of the world? Where was the commitment to work with the states and territories and to build upon the funding that was available from the states and territories for technical trade colleges for the VCAL and the VET programs that are being implemented? Where was the idea to use federal funding as a bit of leverage to increase state funding and the availability of what is on the ground in local areas? Where was the acknowledgement that our young people need and deserve better choices, and that our current education system needs and deserves better facilities and better structures for vocational and educational training?

We will not find any of these things in the Howard government’s Australian technical colleges policy and, because of that, we now see only five of the colleges up and running. Policies like the Australian technical colleges and the amalgamation of traineeships into the New Apprenticeships scheme have provided a political smokescreen for the government’s complacency and neglect when it comes to skills. We can do much better in this country in relation to improving trade skills but the government is unfortunately only capable of finding political solutions to what it sees as political problems. It is incapable of providing real solutions to long-term problems, whether they be the skills crisis, climate change or even water policy. The Australian technical colleges are unfortunately yet another classic example of the Howard government pursuing a political solution to what they see as a political problem and failing to address the real issue behind the skills crisis.

Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006. This bill will provide for increased funding for the ATC program, which is of particular interest to us in the Kalgoorlie electorate, as one of the colleges will open in the Pilbara region in July this year. It is no secret that there are skills shortages in this country and there is nowhere that these shortages are felt more than in my electorate. The resources boom in Western Australia, particularly in the north-west, has created great prosperity but has also created a desperate shortage of workers. Workers are needed in the Pilbara region on every level across all industries, but particularly in the trades. In recent decades there has been a focus on tertiary education, with vocational courses falling behind in popularity and status. This has led to a large number—some say a glut—of university graduates. But the Australian community needs tradespeople as well. There are shortages of plumbers, electricians and builders across the country, jeopardising projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

State laws and regulations have stifled change and progress and kept the training of trade skills locked in the dark ages. Too many cases of trade jealousies and union dominance have aided and abetted state Labor governments in maintaining an environment that discourages young Australians from taking up apprenticeships and making a real contribution to the Australian economy while securing a future for themselves—and a sound financial future at that. The states failed to address the looming problem of the skills shortages, which frustrated the federal government into action in 2004 and into doing something positive and meaningful. We could only be patient for so long waiting for the states to attend to their responsibilities, because everyone is affected by these shortages, and there are dire consequences when communities do not have these services.

For example, in Western Australia there are approximately 4,200 plumbers and related workers according to the state government career information website. The majority of them work in the Perth metropolitan area, where the population is 1.5 million, equating to one plumber for every 357 people. Cities are affected by trade shortages, but the towns across my electorate feel it even more. For example, the online Yellow Pages listing for plumbing businesses reveals seven in Karratha, with a population of 10,000, and just one in the town of Port Hedland, with a population of 15,000. Granted, it is not necessarily accurately representing those trades in the towns, but it gives you a sense of the situation.

While the ALP has an ongoing fascination with streaming all young Australians through a tertiary course, the Howard government has recognised this considerable problem and is committed to raising the profile of vocational and technical education. For the time being we have been forced into adopting the only immediate workable solution, which is skills migration via the 457 visa, but we also have a long-term strategy that will turn this situation around. In fact, this government’s investment over the period 2005 to 2009 will total more than $11.3 billion, the biggest commitment to vocational and technical education by any government in Australia’s history.

The Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Act 2005 was enacted on 19 October 2005, providing the legislative framework to establish and operate the ATC program and providing funding of $343.6 million for the initiative. Attracting people to the trades is vital for Australia’s future. The ATC initiative offers a new approach to achieving this and forms an important part of this government’s strategy for tackling skill shortages. These colleges will promote trade qualifications as a highly valued alternative to a university degree and will provide up to 7,500 young Australians with the opportunity to combine an Australian school based apprenticeship, leading to a national training package qualification, and their Year 12 certificate. This amendment bill provides additional funding of $112.6 million for the ATC program, bringing the total for the 2005 to 2009 period to $456.2 million. The additional funding is broken down into $27.8 million for 2006-07, $42.6 million in 2007-08, $32.6 million in 2008-09 and $9.5 million in 2009-10.

This measure is necessary for a number of reasons. The demand for these colleges has been significant, as has the support from communities and industry. To date, 24 ATCs have been announced and 20 funding agreements have been signed ensuring funding for their establishment and operations until the end of 2009. Five of the colleges are already operational and a further 16 are expected to commence during 2007. Additional funding is also needed to provide for the flexibility of this program. Each college has been encouraged to pursue a model that best meets the needs of the region in which it is established. This flexibility has resulted in the operational costs necessary to get each college up and running being higher than expected. They vary from college to college—that is what flexibility is all about. However, in general, the costs relate to the need to attract the best teachers and support staff, extensive industry engagement, marketing and promotion, curriculum development incorporating industry requirements and the necessity for some colleges to operate on interim models in the early years.

There has been an increase in operational costs due to the fact that, of the 24 announced colleges, only four are based on existing schools, compared with the original estimate of 12. The colleges have not been able to leverage existing services and infrastructure for the new ATCs, which means that new facilities must be built in many cases. It has also emerged that several colleges need multiple campuses to ensure appropriate coverage of the region, which has led to increased operational costs. In fact, the Pilbara ATC is a fine example of this, being decentralised over five separate locations. Additional funding is needed to ensure that students are trained using the latest tools and equipment, with a focus on enterprise, employability, business and information technology skills to ensure that they are as job ready as possible. This final element is of importance to me, as ensuring that our young people are job ready is vital for not only the Pilbara area of my electorate but this nation as a whole.

It was very gratifying for me when I was told at the end of May last year that I had secured an ATC for the Pilbara, and even more so when I joined the former Minister for Vocational and Technical Education, the Hon. Gary Hardgrave, at the signing of the funding agreement—finally—on 18 January this year at Karratha. It was satisfying, as the state government had held up the project. At one stage I was almost convinced that it would not happen. The state opposed the college, resisting the obligation to provide staff on flexible wage structures, but the agreement was finally signed and provided $23.5 million for the college in capital and operational grants. It was signed, due in the main to the perseverance of those who knew that this progress was vital.

The ATC Pilbara, as it is known, will now offer the opportunity for young people to learn a trade without having to leave home and for employers to be involved in the curriculum and, at the same time, provide support for local industries and businesses. The college will be based in Port Hedland, with sites opening at Port Hedland and Karratha in time for semester 2 this year. In 2007, the proposed student enrolments are 50 year 11 students. In 2008, the figure remains the same for year 11 students, but 35 year 12 students are added. In 2009, an estimated 65 year 11 and 40 year 12 students will be enrolled. Student numbers will increase following the opening of the Roebourne and Onslow sites next year and the expansion to Tom Price and Newman in 2009.

The ATCP will be registered as an independent school under the School Education Act 1999, offering courses in engineering, construction, electrotechnology, automotive trades and commercial cookery. The academic learning program will be developed and reviewed annually, and the trade training will be delivered by the Pilbara TAFE. Flexible and practical learning is a key element of academic programs to be offered, and it is anticipated that students will be able to study academic programs outside school time.

The ATC program will produce high-quality, work ready apprentices. This project is a very significant one for the Pilbara, and employers across the board support this project because the need for a local, appropriately trained workforce has never been stronger. Businesses from cafes to major companies are all suffering the same problems in attracting and retaining employees. A search yesterday on just one employment website found 166 vacancies in the Pilbara, from engineer to truck driver to bar manager.

The industry consortium for the ATCP is led by the Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia and comprises BHP Billiton Iron Ore; Pilbara Iron, part of the Rio Tinto Group; Woodside Energy; Chevron Australia; the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association; and the Western Australian Department of Education and Training. There is additional support by local industry groups such as Newcrest Australia, Fortescue Metals Group, WorleyParsons, SKM, and Ngarda Civil and Mining. Their involvement will ensure that the skills taught to students will be directly relevant to the trade they have chosen and will assist in encouraging local employers to provide school based apprenticeship opportunities for students.

I must speak about an element of this program which has the potential for an outcome that is arguably more important than the training of our Pilbara young people generally, and that is the training of our Indigenous young people. Everyone involved with the ATCP will be working to address the issue of Indigenous education. The chair of the ATCP is Mr Meath Hammond, General Manager of Indigenous Affairs at Woodside. Mr Hammond has more than 10 years experience in the community and Indigenous affairs across academia, government and industry. All the parties working on this project recognise the importance of engaging with the local Indigenous community for a mutually beneficial outcome and are committed to increasing Indigenous employment opportunities. The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association has worked with its member companies—including Chevron, which is about to begin developing the $11 billion Gorgon gas project—on the issue of Indigenous employment. Through the Indigenous Affairs portfolio, the Chamber of Minerals and Energy of WA influences legislation and policies on Indigenous issues and provides a forum for addressing the need to build sustainable relationships between industry and Indigenous people.

Training and employment in particular have been a key focus for developing economic and social outcomes, which has been embraced by many Chamber of Minerals and Energy member companies. BHP Billiton’s Pilbara iron ore operation has made a commitment to increase Indigenous employment in its operations and the wider community to 12 per cent by 2010. With the current levels of Indigenous employment at the site at three per cent, this is a very significant undertaking. The program, titled Investment in Aboriginal Relationships, is a long-term initiative that recognises Aboriginal communities as key stakeholders. The program focuses on education, training and employment, including an Indigenous trainee scheme and the development and support of educational, vocational and life skills programs, in conjunction with the education department and the expansion of the BHP Billiton cross-cultural training program.

Rio Tinto’s Pilbara Iron established an Aboriginal training and liaison unit in 1992. Known as ATAL, the unit manages training, employment and community relations programs designed to support self-determination and community capacity building within Aboriginal communities in the Pilbara. ATAL runs education programs, pre-employment training programs and scholarship and cadetship programs in Karratha, Roebourne, Tom Price and Paraburdoo. ATAL’s programs focus on job skills training, small business development, education, cross-cultural development and the preservation of Aboriginal culture and heritage. The cultural heritage unit of ATAL works in consultation with Aboriginal communities and elders to record, map and protect significant Aboriginal sites in proximity to its operations.

In 2002 Woodside became a participant in the Corporate Leaders for Indigenous Employment initiative sponsored by the Australian government. Woodside has instigated an Indigenous employee retention strategy and cultural awareness training for its employees aimed at maintaining long-term employment for its Indigenous employees. There are several employment vehicles through which the company hopes to create employment opportunities for Indigenous people: the National Indigenous Cadetship Project, an Indigenous commercial traineeship program, the Woodside graduate program and direct recruitment.

If you will permit me, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I will provide the House with a brief outline of life in the Pilbara, to give an insight as to the importance of this project to the people in that area. Economic success from mining is certain, but the future of the region is not. Regional Australia, particularly the towns in my electorate, faces an uncertain future due to the lack of regional development. There is no long-term growth, populations are shrinking, towns lack infrastructure and services, and incentives for professionals to relocate to these areas are few and far between.

The resources industry makes the most significant contribution to the Pilbara’s economy—albeit primarily with a fly-in fly-out workforce. It is the biggest employer. It is expected to be prosperous for the foreseeable future. The Indigenous population in the Pilbara, which is marginalised, is rising, but there has not been a correlation to the numbers employed. This is due to welfare dependence, a lack of education and training and a culture which places insufficient importance on self-reliance.

Indigenous children are not encouraged to go to school by their parents, and those who do attend are not made to stay there. The statistics vary, but, in general, I believe 80 per cent of Indigenous children who are enrolled in primary school—which is by no means every child—do not attend on a regular basis. Without at least a primary school education these children have no chance of moving into secondary or further education, let alone of getting a job. The sad reality is that an Aboriginal child is more likely to complete a term of incarceration than year 12.

This situation must change. The resources companies in the Pilbara, as elsewhere, are eager to employ and train Indigenous workers, but the workers are not available. In 2001, according to ABS census data, 50 per cent of working age Indigenous people in the Pilbara were not in the workforce. The ATCP—that is the Australian Technical College, Pilbara—will go a long way to improve standards of education, local employment, local training and business engagement. The most important role I believe it will play is to increase the participation of Indigenous youth in education and training and help them create a future for themselves.

The additional funding provided by this amendment bill will allow the ATCs to be properly funded and taken seriously. The role they will play in the future of our young people is vital, and they must have support from all of us to succeed. I take this opportunity to recognise the hard work done by the former minister, the Hon. Gary Hardgrave, in the area of vocational and technical education. I know that achieving the Pilbara ATC was hard work, requiring great leadership and persuasion skills. However, required above all was tenacity and the ability to never countenance failure. I thank him for his interest in the Pilbara and the training of our young people there. He saw that Pilbara firsthand on a number of occasions. Thanks and recognition must also go to the ATCP board and the Pilbara business community for its support and encouragement of this project. I commend this bill to the House.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the position adopted by the opposition in relation to the establishment of Australian technical colleges in the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia's Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006. This is the third time I have stood in this House and spoken about Australian technical colleges. On the last occasion I spoke to legislation dealing with the Australian technical colleges—or ATCs as I will call them from now on—I made the point that this government introduces legislation into this parliament regularly, and we, as members of this House, find ourselves returning to the House time and time and time again to deal with that legislation simply because it does not get it right the first time.

This is a pretty good example of a government failing to get it right the first time, as the legislation amends column 2 of the financial assistance table under subsection 18(4) of the act. In effect, it increases the total funding appropriated under the act—in other words, it costs more than they said it would. They did not do their costing properly; they did not do their homework. They made an announcement on the run during the election, and I will deal with that a bit more further into my contribution to this debate.

As any sensible member of this parliament would, I support any initiative that will provide vocational training to young Australians and also address the chronic skills shortage we have in this country—a shortage that has developed because the Howard government have been asleep at the wheel. They have not paid attention to the climate and the needs of our nation. Unfortunately for the people of Australia, the government decided that they would introduce Australian technical colleges. This was not the most effective approach to solving the problem and not the most effective approach to ensuring that young people who wanted to undertake training in trades could actually do so. It was not the most effective way to address skills shortages, particularly when you consider that the first person to complete their training at an Australian technical college will not hit the ground until 2010.

This was an idea that was floated in the 2004 election—six years from the date that the government came up with an idea to establish ATCs. I think that this idea of the ATCs was driven by two things: the 2004 election and the government being bereft of ideas and policies that they could announce during the election campaign. They thought that an Australian technical college was a good idea. This is the same government that has absolutely ripped dollar after dollar out of the TAFE system in the states. One of the first acts of this government was to cut funding to TAFE colleges. On the one hand they take away and now they have decided that they will establish an Australian technical college system that will go over the top of the TAFE system.

I think it is also important to note at this point that the other aspect of it is the government’s ideological hatred of the states. They look at any way that they can usurp power from or establish themselves over the top of the states. Rather than looking at what is best for the community, and for those young people who are attending school and wanting to train, they decide that they will take power from the states, put it into their own hands and not look at what the real picture is. What it is all about is training young Australians. What it is all about is addressing the skills shortage. I am afraid the government are awarded an F for their efforts in that area—an F for addressing the skills shortage and an F for truly providing young Australians with the opportunity to undertake traditional apprenticeships. As I have already mentioned, it was ill conceived and poorly planned. Because of the poor planning, we still have a situation where some technical colleges have not even been awarded.

I would like to address some very serious issues previously raised by the member for Dobell. I was so concerned when I heard what he had to say that I thought I should check the facts. The member for Dobell attacked the New South Wales government. There is no surprise about that. I actually think that the only contribution that the member for Dobell makes in this House is to attack the New South Wales government or somebody who is not a member of this parliament. He said that the New South Wales government was refusing to sign the memorandum of understanding that would see the ATC on the Central Coast established. That is quite a serious thing to say, so I have checked the facts. I have been advised that the Department of Education and Training—that is, the New South Wales DET officers—are in cooperative discussions with the Australian technical college proponents, they are working together and the process is moving along very nicely. There is total cooperation between all parties. There is no conflict at all. No-one is putting any delay into the process. It is all about working together and providing maximum opportunities for local students. That is what is happening.

The member for Dobell really portrayed a picture that is not true. He said that the New South Wales government is refusing to sign the memorandum of understanding whilst all parties involved are working towards signing it. He also put a date for it to be signed. That date is 24 March. Members of this House may wonder why he chose 24 March. I am certain it was not because my daughter is getting married on 24 March. Rather, I think it is because it is the state election. I might say to the members of this House that the member for Dobell was obviously just playing blatant politics. I think it is an absolute disgrace that he could politicise a process that has taken so long to get to this point and that he could come down here and say that the state government is not cooperating and working to see that that ATC on the Central Coast is up and running.

I think the member for Dobell should actually hang his head in shame. It is little wonder, I might say, that he is known on the coast as the Ghost of the Coast. Why? Because he has hidden his electorate office away where no-one can find him. I receive numerous phone calls from constituents asking where he is. I am even more concerned because, after the redistribution that has recently taken place in New South Wales, part of the electorate of Shortland that I previously represented has now moved into the Dobell electorate. Already I have been contacted by irate voters saying that they feel that it is very unfair that they are going to have to travel to the Tuggerah Business Park, I think it is, on the second floor. These are elderly people living on the Central Coast. I say to the Ghost of the Coast: how about taking politics out of this issue of getting the Central Coast ATC up and running and really showing that you are interested in the people of the Central Coast.

I will go back to the more important aspect of this debate—the Australian technical colleges. I have previously stated that the announcement on ATCs by the government during the 2004 election smelt very much of a political fix. It looked to solve a policy problem rather than address the chronic skills shortages which existed then and which still exist in Australia today. The Australian Industry Group, which is very supportive of the government, has estimated that there is a skills shortage of around 100,000 people in Australia, and a large number of them are needed in the area of the traditional trades. I am very concerned about the government’s response, which has been the establishment of ATCs rather than putting more money in the TAFE system. I am also very concerned about the other approach to dealing with the skills shortage—that is, apprentices being brought in from overseas. Neither of these approaches has been particularly popular in my area.

The Shortland electorate straddles both the Central Coast and the Hunter. It is important to look at where these ATCs will be established and at whether or not they will assist students who live in the Shortland electorate. The Hunter ATC is going to be a joint venture between the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle and the Hunter Valley Training Company. They are both outstanding organisations and have my 100 per cent support because they have done some wonderful work in the region. The ATC is set to commence this month, which is great news. It will have a multicampus, non-government school for years 11 and 12. Campuses will be in Maitland, Singleton and Newcastle. But that is the problem. How will a young person who lives in the Shortland electorate be able to access those ATCs? The people whom I represent in this House would benefit much more from the government putting money into TAFE colleges.

As recently as last week, I was contacted by constituents in my electorate whose young sons wished to attend Belmont TAFE to do pre-apprenticeship courses—courses that have been run for a number of years and have been very successful. Unfortunately, because of the lack of funding going to TAFEs, the college was no longer able to run these courses. So, instead of these young people doing a metal fabrication pre-apprenticeship course or an engineering pre-apprenticeship at Belmont TAFE, they now have to look at doing something else. It is very unfortunate that the government is pouring money into something that students living in the electorate that I represent will not be able to access. These students come from a background where they aspire to undertake apprenticeships. Their goal in life is to work in one of the traditional trades. But here you have a situation where people who would make outstanding tradespeople are being denied that opportunity.

I will now turn to the Central Coast ATC. I think the memorandum of understanding for that ATC will be signed very shortly. This college will enable students of years 11 and 12 to undertake trade training in engineering, construction, electrotechnology, automotives and commercial cookery. As the member for Dobell noted, it is being established by a local industry association, the Central Coast Manufacturers Association. Albany International, Kitchens of Sara Lee, ADC Krone, Gibbens Industries, Masterfoods, Adhesive Research, Gosfern, Thermit and Pacific Labels will all be involved in it.

Delta Electricity, another partner in the Central Coast ATC, have been very proactive. In my last contribution to the debate on ATCs, I mentioned their involvement in the group training scheme. They have trained apprentices over a number of years. My community newsletter also had a story promoting the work of Delta Electricity and that of the group training scheme on the Central Coast in helping young people to undertake apprenticeships and qualify as tradespeople. Once again, I acknowledge the fine work achieved through the group training scheme and Delta Electricity.

My real concern about the Central Coast ATC is that it will be located at Gosford. I forgive members of this House for being unaware of the distance between Gosford and, say, Gwandalan in the Shortland electorate. It would be extremely difficult for a young person in years 11 and 12 to travel from Gwandalan to Gosford to undertake training at the ATC. It would involve a lengthy bus trip, a train trip and then probably another bus trip at the other end. I would argue very strongly the case that young people will have limited access to these technical colleges.

I want to return to the issue of skills shortages to paint a little picture of what they are like within my local area. On 5 September last year a release from DEWR said:

The skills shortage in the Hunter’s coal industry appears to be worsening.

Mine contracting firm Allied Coal Services has spent the past 60 years placing workers in jobs in the state’s mining sector.

Managing director David Briggs says a recent nationwide recruitment drive only found 80 mine workers with experience, and only 25 per cent of those had the specialist skills needed for a job.

He says the outlook is bleak, with the Hunter’s mining work force getting older and few skilled younger workers entering the industry.

I say that these ATCs are not going to do anything to help the mining industry that so desperately needs skilled workers in the Hunter. I would argue very strongly that the government needs to be much more proactive. They need to put aside their feelings of hatred for the states, forget the fact that there are Labor governments in power in the states and embrace and work with the states to try and solve the problem.

In the remaining time, I will quickly touch again on a DEWR survey. Sixty-nine per cent of employers surveyed expect to recruit staff—this is in the Hunter in the next 12 months—and 59 per cent of those said that they do not expect to be able to fill those jobs. The survey covered all major industries and occupations and only 70 per cent of those vacancies were filled and the number of applicants for those jobs was very limited in the areas of skill.

It is time for action. It is time for more than the ATCs to address this issue. It is time for the government to get real about skills shortages. It is time for the government to do something to address the issue. It is time for the government to make a real commitment to young Australians to ensure that they get the training they need. It is time for people like the member for Dobell to stop disgraceful political grandstanding, stop creating problems and acknowledge the fact that the state government is working with the federal government on the Central Coast. (Time expired)

Mark Baker (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006 and strongly encourage all members to express their support for it. The Australian government’s commitment to addressing areas of skills needs as a prerequisite to developing a skilled Australian workforce and keeping Australia’s economic growth strong is well known. There are great skills needs throughout a number of traditional trades in Australia and, contrary to what the member for Shortland has just been espousing, it actually occurs when you have a strong economy and a 4.6 per cent unemployment rate—something that the Labor Party can only dream of. We all know about and experienced through the 1990s Labor’s destruction of the Australian economy, the destruction of businesses through record interest rates and over a million people unemployed. The member for Shortland needs to sit back and appreciate and remember those disastrous times. So as great a skills shortage as there is in this county, it has actually occurred through a thriving economy.

The Australian government is strongly committed to encouraging and supporting young Australians into trades and onto trade based self-employment or opening their own small businesses—another thing that the Labor Party has no comprehension of, no experience in and no understanding of what is required. The establishment of 25 Australian technical colleges in regions experiencing skills needs and higher than average rates of unemployment has demonstrated the Howard government’s leadership in providing this type of future.

A key concern for all businesses today is the need for a high level of quality productivity in the workplace. According to workplace studies conducted universally—in 2003 by the University of New South Wales, in 2004 by Monash University, in 2005 by Harvard University—one of the key factors that enhances productivity is the skill of the workforce to produce goods and services at a globally competitive performance level. We live in a world of globalisation. We live in a competitive world—something that we need to continually understand and appreciate as we move to a higher level of skills needs in this country.

Studies undertaken by the Great Lakes Council in Pennsylvania, the Singapore government on behalf of the ITC system and Harvard University verify that trade based training led by industry, supported by education—and that is one concept that the Labor Party cannot seem to understand or grab hold of; this is a new concept of industry to education, not education to industry—provides a significant contributor to higher productivity outcomes in the workplace. The decision by the Australian federal Liberal government to introduce the industry led training initiative, the ATCs, was one based upon the need for a skilled workforce that will be driving productivity and world’s best practice processes into the future.

Each of the 25 regions is different in aspirations, style and substance. By offering training in a specialised trade that is of particular relevance to the local region, and is in one of the industry groups which have been identified as a priority, the government has set the overall direction and strategies necessary to respond to the most significant challenge faced by Australian business in ensuring ongoing economic growth and development—that is, the training of more skilled workers to meet a growing demand by Australian businesses in order to remain competitive in the global economy.

The establishment of the Australian technical colleges has provided a new approach to achieving this objective and forms an important part of the Australian government’s overall strategy for tackling our skills needs. In promoting trade qualifications as a highly valued alternative to a university degree, and demonstrating that vocational education and training provides access to careers that are secure, lucrative and rewarding, the Australian government is actively raising the profile of vocational and technical education.

The ATCs serve to address the skills needs of the Australian economy through the pursuit of a number of key goals. These include: the promotion of pride and excellence in trade skills training for young people; the provision of skills and education in a flexible learning environment in order to build a solid basis for secure and rewarding careers; the adoption of a new industry-led approach to providing education and training in partnership with local communities to meet regional labour market needs; the provision of trade training that is relevant to industry and that leads to nationally recognised qualifications through school based new apprenticeships; the provision of academic and vocational education which is relevant to trade careers and leads to a year 12 certificate; the provision of employability and business skills to young people, recognising that many successful apprentices will operate their own businesses; and the development of expertise in a range of industries in a region, with the flexibility to meet changing workforce and local industry needs.

Students studying at the colleges will be provided with tuition in trade related vocational training, leading to a national training package qualification, and academic studies which allow them to complete their senior secondary education. This is a new way of developing and training for the future skills needs of our country where we are providing an apprenticeship, skills training and also pre-tertiary education. Students will commence a school based new apprenticeship in a trade in an industry where there is a need. They will have a strong foundation to continue with the preferred trade after they complete year 12 but will also keep open the option of going on to further academic study if they so choose.

By promoting a strong career path in trade and occupations in key industries as a helpful and satisfying opportunity for young people, the Australian technical colleges play a pivotal role in raising the profile and status of vocational pathways. They offer high-quality training and facilities where capable and committed students who are interested in pursuing a rewarding career can start their vocational training. The colleges provide training which is relevant to industry and which leads to nationally recognised qualifications relevant to trade careers and further academic study if students so choose. The colleges provide employability and business skills to young people and develops expertise in a range of industries in a region with the flexibility to meet changing workforce and local industry needs tailored to the needs and challenges of each individual region. The flexibility offered by the Australian technical colleges to tailor arrangements to local needs is especially valuable. It is what makes this new form of education so valuable to the regions that they will be located in.

As noted earlier, the Australian technical colleges are able to offer training in specialised trades of particular relevance to a local region or to one of the industry groups which have been identified by the Australian government as a priority. Each Australian technical college provides both academic and vocational technical education as well as the opportunity for each student to commence a school based apprenticeship in a trade. Australian technical colleges are for students in years 11 and 12. Students enter into school based apprenticeships in the trades at the certificate III level. This leads to a nationally recognised qualification. Students study academic subjects leading to a year 12 certificate and also gain IT, employability and business skills, enabling them to run their own businesses if they desire. Thus students learn a trade whilst studying towards their year 12 certificate; and, if they choose to, study subjects which would give them the option to go onto university. After listening to the member for Shortland, I suggest that she sits down to read about and understand what these new Australian technical colleges will provide. I should probably say that not only to the member for Shortland but the majority of the Labor opposition.

These new colleges will provide an incentive for more students to stay on at school and will encourage more students to pursue a trade qualification. They expand student choice by providing another pathway to a career involving trades. Facilities and educational services offered by the colleges are high quality, establishing them as centres of excellence in trade training, thereby raising the profile of vocational and technical education in schools and strengthening the training system as a whole. The colleges play an important role in expanding school based apprenticeships, particularly in the traditional trades area.

The unique and sustainable quality of the Australian government models insists that local industry and community representatives have a leadership role in the governance of each of the colleges. The direct involvement of industry and community leaders ensures that the skills taught to students match those skills required by local businesses. Students will be trained in these skills through an Australian school-based apprenticeship which will lead to a nationally recognised qualification. At the same time, students will also complete the academic subjects required for their year 12 certification.

These bills do not support an untried method or model. The ATC model, which seems to be misunderstood by those on the other side in this House, considers successes that have already been recorded globally. For example, similar education facilities exist in Pennsylvania, USA; the Institute of Technical Education, Singapore; Malaysia; Holland; and the UK. They have verified and quantified results validating the important contribution an industry-led training model makes towards business’s long term economic sustainability. I would like to quote one of the key findings from the Singapore government’s review of the ITE college, an industry-led trade training school. It said: ‘The quality of the workforce is an essential prerequisite for an organisation’s sustainable growth. Business competitiveness is possible only if the workforce can produce products and services at a highly productive level.’

Industry-led training brings industry skills into education, providing a high level of knowledge transfer between both disciplines. Such an approach has a strong following as the most effective method of training for the trades being targeted by the Australian technical colleges model. The training model ensures our young people have the best prospects for employment due to the high level of relevancy their training has to the industries which will employ them. This training model ensures that our businesses have the best skilled workers, which are the core of a high level of industry productivity and a sustainable economy. This is a model that is flexible, evolving and relevant to local regional skill needs. It is a model that is transforming training and education in this country today.

The Australian technical colleges differ from current schools and TAFE in that they provide students with the opportunity to pursue trades training, leading to a nationally accredited qualification, as well as complete their senior secondary education. Students at colleges will have the opportunity to commence an Australian school based apprenticeship. Such a model in turn supports the long-term prosperity of each of the regions in which the colleges are located and, of course, assists Australian businesses to remain competitive in a global economy such that exists today. The Australian technical colleges offer an alternative model of training, through the provision of high-quality training and facilities, thus further increasing Australia’s vocational and technical education system and, at the same time, providing more choices and more opportunities for our young people.

The bill also requires states to take action to maximise choice for employers and new apprentices so that they can choose the most relevant, flexible and convenient training for their particular needs. Maximising Australia’s skills base is a high priority for industry, particularly in the traditional trades like engineering, electro-technology, building and construction, as well as in new and emerging technologies such as photonics and nanotechnology. Through this bill, the Australian government is demonstrating its commitment to high-quality, nationally consistent education and training and to working closely with industry to find solutions. Something that the Labor Party has great difficulty in coming to terms with is actually working with industry to find solutions. The Australian government is committed to high-quality, nationally consistent education and training. By working closely with business and industry at all levels, the Australian government has fostered a national collaboration and engagement which will undoubtedly lead to improved success within Australia’s training system.

The bill will make available some $343.6 million over the period to 2009 to support the establishment and operation of the 25 colleges. This supplementary funding will support infrastructure development as well as the additional costs associated with the delivery of the specialised services which the colleges will provide. This funding is over and above other general recurrent funding which colleges will be eligible to receive from the Australian government under the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Act 2004 and recurrent funding provided by state and territory governments.

The Howard government’s commitment to vocational and technical education is illustrated by the significant funding provided through this bill, which will further increase Australia’s vocational and technical education system and deliver improved vocational training to young people throughout this nation, which will create a future for them to enjoy. It will allow them to grow and take this country forward in the years to come. I commend this bill to the House.

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

Here is a quick quiz. When do you know that someone on the government side who has read the entire speech does not know what they are talking about? You know when they talk about ‘photo-onics’ instead of photonics. What is brought to this debate by people on the government side is a lack of knowledge, a lack of understanding and a lack of experience in the education sector. Maybe we should ask them at question time to stick their hands up if they actually have experience as a teacher. There are more on this side than on that side.

Mark Baker (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have.

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

Certainly not in photonics. I could guess that—otherwise you might know what the discipline is. I had 10 years as an English history teacher—and in fact have a master in both of those subjects—at the De La Salle College in Bankstown. I also taught diploma entrance I and diploma entrance II at Bankstown Technical College. So I not only have some idea of how the education system works at the secondary level, in years 7 to 10, but also a pretty good knowledge, gained from the five or so years that I taught at Bankstown TAFE, about the difficulties faced by those people who did not complete their secondary education when they first had the chance—those students who come in as mature age students who realise that they missed an opportunity while they were doing their secondary education. They come in after work and commit themselves to try to increase their level of capacity by getting further qualifications—whether that is certificate entrance I or II or diploma entrance I or II—with a view to getting equivalent qualifications to either the school certificate or the HSC, at that point in time.

There were also the students who realised that they did not have available to them an appropriate education in the trades area in the schools that they went to. Over a long period of time now, we have seen a fundamental transition in terms of what is provided at the school level and at the TAFE level and what is no longer provided on a vast scale by the major trainers of young employees, our major apprenticeship sources, such as Telstra—the old Telecom, which was the Postmaster-General’s Department when my brother Kerry went there. At the end of fourth year at school in the old system in New South Wales, he did four and a half or five years full training at the Redfern Institute of the Postmaster-General’s Department and came out as a fully qualified PNG technician and spent his entire working life in that area. He retired a while ago and now he is doing a series of other things.

His experience was the experience of many people of his generation—the pre-Wyndham generation—where going into the trades was virtually the only option for most people, particularly those coming from an Irish Catholic background in Bankstown. You could not front up and expect to gain entry into most of the professions, because you could not get into the universities in the first place. So forget about being a doctor, lawyer, dentist and all the rest of it; for most of the people who came from Bankstown in my era it just was not on. That is why the former member for Blaxland, Paul Keating, left school at the age of 15 and pursued electrical engineering. Where at? Bellmore tech, because that was available to him to do his training. That is where he connected with the Electrical Trades Union. That is where he got his fundamental understanding of and interest in engineering. That is why when you heard him speak as Treasurer and as Prime Minister, when he talked about the levers of power et cetera, you may have noticed that he used a series of motifs which were engineering based. That is how he understood the world.

That is also part of the reason why, apart from being influenced by the local nature of Bankstown-speak and the people he ran around with, not only with the ETU but also in the other places that he worked—which were pretty rough and ready, very much working-class and running back to Cockney and so on—the vibrancy of what he had to say rested on saying it from a different point of view, as well as coming from a different milieu. But for Paul, and for virtually everybody he went to school with, there were not the options in higher education. There were no options, either, in terms of where you would go. Almost the only other place to go was a safe place in the Public Service.

You could become a copper and work in certain parts of the police force—the ones that were not run by the Masons; the ones that were run by the Catholics—or you could go into particular government departments and become a clerk. You would sign up to the Federated Clerks Union, which was a Catholic union in a Catholic stratum of the Public Service. What was available to people otherwise? The option was to work as a labourer in the local factories or to work as a tradesperson, if they got the chance, if they picked up an opportunity to become an electrician, as did the former member for Kingsford Smith, Laurie Brereton. He became a fully qualified electrician. Leo McLeay, the former member for Watson did. Leo worked with the PMG, as my brother Kerry did. They got their training on the job and at TAFE.

What they understood intimately was how important it was for people to get a really good education in the trades, because that built their chance for the future. In the fifties and sixties in Western Sydney there was no way up and no way to improve the lifestyle of your family unless two fundamental things happened. You had to break the back of the discrimination against Irish Catholics in Australia and break the back of employment discrimination. You could only apply to work in certain jobs; there were only certain parts that you were allowed into. You were not allowed into the upper echelons. There was a glass ceiling, not just for females but for just about everybody. It worked on the basis of capacity to pay. It worked on the basis that you could get your entry point if you could pay. If you came from a wealthy background then you might be able to break through. To his eternal credit, Gough Whitlam broke the back of that disadvantage by allowing people from poor backgrounds into the system. Australia is immensely wealthier as a country and richer in all senses because he did that.

How dare the government attempt to reinstitute Dickensian, 19th-century notions, not only through their industrial relations reforms, which are all about the Master and Servant Act, but in the education area as well. Look at the changes they have made to the HECS program, particularly in maths and science. We have said we will address that directly and forcefully to deal with the dramatic decline in Australia in statisticians, in mathematically trained people and in science trained people, not only as teachers but across all areas of industry and all areas of the Public Service. There is a dramatic shortfall. This mob has tried to make education a privilege again, and a privilege for those people who can buy their way into the future.

I have had to sit here and listen, time after time, when this bill has come before us, to speeches about their 24 technical colleges. At one stage they made it 25 but I think we are back to about 24. We are told that three of them are open. Whoop-whoop! Isn’t that great? Here is a quick quiz: when will the first fully qualified person emerge from one of those technical colleges? 2010. Where are we now? My guess is that we are at the start of 2007. It will be another three years before we see the emergence of anyone from those colleges.

I will claim to be guilty on a number of counts on a range of things but I cannot claim to be guilty of agreeing with John Howard in relation to much—the member for Bennelong, a former Treasurer and the current Prime Minister. But I have to claim guilt in terms of one thing: I cannot condemn the idea of these technical colleges. They are a 1950s approach to education. This I will fully confess: I think it is right to concentrate on technical and further education. I was the first person in my family to go to university. To get there I had to win scholarships to go to fifth and sixth form and I had to win a Commonwealth scholarship to go to university. We could not afford it otherwise. I still worked my way through. I was privileged to do it and privileged to have the opportunity to work at it and to break through.

In the first part of the Wyndham program, pre Whitlam, there was an avenue—but a very small one—for those people who could either get a Commonwealth teaching scholarship or gain sponsorship from companies. Hardly anyone in my family understood why I wanted to spend my life learning out of books, given that we were a small business family. We were a working-class family, where people either worked for others or ran their own businesses. Historically, on both sides, that is exactly what we have done. People understood that you laboured and worked as hard as you could for your daily bread. They could not understand another world that they had not had entry to, where you could do things using what a university gave you access to—not just teaching but the rest of it. It was a foreign world. For a lot of people, it meant that they needed to learn about that.

In the seven years between Paul Keating and me and the three and a half years between me and my older brother, Kerry, the world opened up for others. But it opened up for those people who had a chance to get trade training—for example, with the State Rail Authority. In Chullora, at the great rail yards there, they taught people boilermaking, metalwork and sheet work. Now they are teaching people again. In carpentry, for example, they have two tremendous facilities. One deals with domestic carpentry and the other is the only place in Sydney where people are taught to work on building many-storeyed buildings. That facility has just opened, and it is the centrepiece for the whole of Sydney. Some features of the work that went on in the past can be seen there now, and they are related in particular to gathering up people who cannot find a place elsewhere. But this is within the context of the most massive skills crisis we have seen. This is a result of a decade’s worth of the most significant employers of apprentices—Telstra, the SRA and every major employer—having got right out of that game.

The end, in the last 10 years, for those kids who wanted to get trade training was to get into a situation under the Liberals in which they got a cut-down version of the whole show: Dr Kemp’s traineeships—the poor man’s version of a full apprenticeship. The skills crisis that we have is very directly related to that. The federal government blame it all on the states, but it is the federal government who have to bear the responsibility. What have they left out of the equation, which is so fundamental to this? It is the fact that without a full-blooded apprenticeship system operating, one that is as deep and strong as that we used to have in the past, you will not get fully qualified, knowledgeable people coming out and we will have a dramatic dearth of tradies.

I am 55 years of age. Guess what the average age of tradespeople is in Australia? It is 55. I bet their ages will just keep going up with mine. But we are reaching a critical crisis point. As those people retire, unless they are kept in chains forever—and they cannot be kept in there at the wheel for forever and a day—with our ageing population, we will not have those people in the workforce. They will not be there as skilled tradespeople, and they will not be there as trade teachers either. We face a massive crisis in that area, which will continue the skills crisis. What is the government’s remedy for this? I think it is entirely farcical.

The government has argued its remedy over 10 years. It started with the good Dr Kemp and has been continued by a series of government spokesmen, including the recently demoted minister, who spoke on this bill in December and who got the flick. He is now a parliamentary secretary, but he has been given the title of assistant minister for a bit of face saving. Why did he get the flick? Why was he demoted? Was it the fact that this whole scheme, this travesty of 24 places Australia wide, has been so poorly run and so poorly put together to provide a token technical college system for Australia? This is the government of tokenism. It is a government putting up a facade.

It is like the Soviet Union in the 1950s when, in Joe Stalin’s era, they used to run people down the major thoroughfares in Moscow and it was a cardboard city. They had whole avenues full of cardboard cut-outs to make it look like they were a prosperous country, that there was a great deal of activity, that there had been fresh building and so on. Behind the facade, you found that there was virtually nothing. The Communists in Russia at that time had the temerity to argue that they were the great new society and were well in front of the West not only in terms of dealing with their people but also in the way in which they trained people and in the whole gamut of things that you could compare East and West on during the Cold War. But the reality was that they were as hollow at the core as this coalition government is.

At this time, all you get out of the mouths of those in the government are claims that Labor does not speak for tradespeople, Labor does not care about technical colleges, Labor only cares about university education and that is all it ever cared about. That is so adverse to Labor’s entire history, which is based upon building everything we do on the basis of attempting to improve the lives of working people in Australia. What we did in the period of our last government was to attempt to reshape technical and further education in Australia and to reshape the whole way in which the states went about getting together and cooperating with each other so that kids could go from one end of the country to the other and have their qualifications.

So glacial is the approach to this problem that, more than 10 years later, this government still have not fixed it. It is almost ticking over to 11 years that they have been in the joint. They have not fixed the problem of kids in Western Australia not being able to take their qualifications from one state to the other. They have not fixed it in relation to teachers either. The state bureaucracies are simply Antarctic in this regard. Melting them down takes a great deal of time. I know; I was part of trying to do it. But this mob have not put the heat on them in order to get those kinds of results.

But to campaign, as they have time after time in this House, on the basis that Labor does not care about trade training is purely and simply crazy. It is ridiculous. We understand that it is a betrayal of the Australian people and of the 300,000 young kids who should have had access to full trade training, apprenticeships and even the modified traineeships over the past 10 years but who have not had that because the funding to the states has been cut back. It has been cut back in the health and education areas. Those people have been absolutely betrayed and this government has sought stopgap measures to deal with the skills crisis by bringing in plasterers en bloc from China.

I know that because in this very area, in the block of flats I am living in now, I saw some of these guys. It was in the middle of the afternoon and I thought: ‘Who are these guys? Do they have a ticket? No. Do they have vests on? No. Do they have work boots on? No. Do they have hardhats? No.’ They were covered in plaster. It was about an hour and half after everyone else was out of the joint. They were aged between about 22 and 50. And I really understood for the very first time what the government’s program was with their 457 visas. There are over a quarter of a million people on those visas, which used to be exclusive to major international companies who needed a specialised accountant to come here for four years, for example. This is a farcical, hollow government that has utterly betrayed the Australian people and all the young people who should have been allowed the opportunity to have trade training for the future.

I have to confess to actually agreeing with the 1950s approach to technical colleges. It is the one good thing to come out of this. Our education system Australia wide has not properly adjusted to the realities of the 21st century. There are not the proper opportunities, except in certain places, for kids to do full trade training while they are going to school. I actually think the old model of technical high school, where you get a comprehensive education and full trade training is the proper thing to do. That is how I would change the system if I had the capacity to do so. That is what I will continue to argue for.

I saw that in operation in Holland in 1975—32 years ago—and it worked magnificently. The Dutch, after a bit of experimentation over the last few years, have come back fully to what works extraordinarily well. We know, from the late 1980s, the Carmichael report and the work that was done based on that, that the work done in Europe had been taken note of by the Hawke and Keating governments, and they were putting into place a restoration of technical education in Australia because of its primary importance.

What have also been lost over the last 10 years are the opportunities to have Australians trained in Australia by other Australians while the skills could still be communicated, to build jobs and industries that are Australian and to export those skills to the region. Instead of doing that, we have imported all of those skills into our region. Our country has been impoverished because of a lazy ideological and hollow government that does not have any fundamental concern for the Australian people. It should be booted out at the first opportunity. (Time expired)

Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak this afternoon on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006. This bill will increase the amount of total funding appropriated under the act from $343.6 million to $456.2 million over the period 2005-09. While we on this side of the House generally support the bill, I, along with my colleagues, have some strong reservations about the government’s approach to enhancing vocational training and education. We will not oppose this bill, because we do not want to play a political game and deter any steps which may improve the skills base—steps that are desperately needed to be taken in this country.

In my opinion, responsibility for the current skills crisis lies fairly and squarely at the feet of the Howard government. The government has had its head in the sand for 10 long years as our skills crisis has continued to grow. It has been warned time and time again. As our competitor economies invest heavily in their education systems, our government has been pulling funding out. Instead of funding our nation’s excellent TAFE colleges, this government has gone about setting up a whole new level of bureaucracy to duplicate vocational training services already offered through the TAFEs in the states. In fact, we raised this issue when the bill was first debated in this place some time ago now. If only this government had invested this money into the state TAFE systems we could have had graduates a lot sooner. As it stands, under the technical colleges program, we will not see our first tradesperson graduate until 2010 at the earliest, even later here in my local region. The Australian technical colleges represent a bandaid solution to Australia’s skill crisis. It is just too little and too late, with a very, very long lead time.

As I move around my electorate and the region, skills shortages and their impacts on the local economy are brought to my attention. The skills crisis is an inevitable part of any discussion about the long-term economic prosperity of the region and of our nation. I know that if I go to the hairdresser or if I talk to people from the local chamber of commerce—all sorts of people in my community and in this region—they always bring up at some point the question of skills shortage and the desperate need to be doing something about it.

I am greatly concerned that this government has allowed its ideology on industrial relations to delay the establishment of some of these technical colleges. In particular, I am concerned about the delays in the opening of the Queanbeyan college, which was announced in September 2004, to service the Southern Highlands region, the ACT and the region around the ACT. Despite being announced almost 2½ years ago, we do not have one student enrolled in the Queanbeyan Technical College. There is not one student studying to be a plumber, a carpenter, a mechanic, a hairdresser, a bricklayer or anything else, for that matter, and there is not one student on their way to realising their dream of attaining a trade. You must say, after 2½ years, that it is a fairly slow way of doing something about the skills shortage in this region. In fact, the recently replaced minister, the member for Moreton, announced the successful tenderer only in November last year. No wonder the Prime Minister moved him on. It took him over two years to find an operator for the Queanbeyan college, and we still do not have one student enrolled. I understand that the Queanbeyan college is due to open some time in 2008, so we will be waiting until at least 2012 before we see our first graduate.

There is only one reason for the delay in addressing the skills crisis that is impacting on our region, and that reason is the government’s ideological obsession with its extreme industrial relations laws. Back in April of last year, then Minister Hardgrave’s office was quoted in the Canberra Times as saying:

…the Queanbeyan region would have to wait for its college because the Government did not want the NSW Government’s involvement in the leading bid.

He went on to say:

…the strong bid would have to be restructured but was still preferred over the second bid which lacked strength.

That was in April 2006. The only reason this government rejected a bid by a local Queanbeyan consortium—the Capital Region Business Enterprise Centre, which included the NSW Department of Education—was that that consortium refused to put their staff onto AWAs, the same AWAs that are stripping workers of their penalty rates, overtime rates and other essential conditions all over the country, and the same AWAs that we believe are of some concern to a great number of Australian workers. This is further proof that there are no choices under Work Choices. The government, I believe, put its obsession with these IR laws before the needs of local businesses and students and the long-term prosperity of the ACT and the Southern Highlands and delayed the project.

It was not until 1 November 2006 that Minister Hardgrave announced the successful tenderer for the operation of the Queanbeyan college. It is not at all surprising that the successful tenderer is not the local consortium which had refused to take part in that IR agenda. I do not know what process was used by the minister to choose another tenderer; no-one seems to know. Is it the second bid which the minister said ‘lacked strength’? Did this government choose the successful tenderer based on their compliance with the IR agenda over the quality educational outcomes for local students and businesses? I do not know, and I cannot seem to find any other possible answer.

We have lost another almost two years on this project because of the obsession by this government in relation to the AWA question. I know that many people in the region’s business community are not impressed with this government’s what I would call ‘petty politicking’ over the Queanbeyan college. Local students are not impressed either, nor are the local governments in the region or the chambers of commerce—at least, not the ones I speak to. We have all been let down badly by this government’s mishandling of the project. As I said earlier, it is a pity that some of this money had not been put into the TAFE system, the system that is already up and running.

In Canberra, our TAFE is called CIT, the Canberra Institute of Technology. I want to refer in passing to three programs that that particular institution is running because of the skill shortage. They have attempted to make up and bring on stream faster than usual some outcomes for students, and all of these programs relate to areas of dramatic skills shortage. The first program I want to talk about is their chefs program. It is an intensive training program and includes a workplace training component. The four-year training program has been reduced to two years, and it is extremely successfull. Its outcomes are very highly regarded, and it is producing very productive, well-qualified people in an accelerated time purely because it can see the need and they want to do it.

I also want to talk about enrolled nurses. At CIT, if students have a Certificate IV in Health (Nursing), they can access an intensive bridging program of 150 hours in a block over two weeks. Credits are then given to move to the second year of the three-year degree in collaboration with the Catholic University here in the ACT. This is another area of desperate skill shortage and an example of something positive that is being done.

The third area I want to talk about is also of extreme importance, and that is allied health. We in this place hear everywhere we go about the shortage of qualified people in the area of allied health. The ACT department of health and the Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services have developed a Certificate IV in Allied Health Assistance. The people involved might already be in the workforce, but they need their skills increased to carry out further advanced work. We are talking about allied health areas such as speech pathology, occupational therapy and other similar areas that are desperately in need. This training can be done while these people are still in the workforce. They may be participating in the workforce at that lower level and want to increase their competency; we desperately need them to do so. Because they can undertake further study while they are working, they are actually freeing up university places. It is a very progressive program for an area of desperate need in the country due to the skills shortage.

When we are talking about the skills shortage, certainly we are talking about plumbers, motor mechanics and a range of other people, but also we are talking about nurses and allied health workers, all of whom are desperately needed to deliver services to our communities. I commend CIT for their progressive way of looking at how to improve the training programs they offer. Would it not have been a better idea to see the money that is supposedly going into these colleges given to a process like that? How much more inventive could they be if they had those resources? Rather, in the local case, I understand that the resources are sitting around doing nothing while we wait for the development of this college.

Like the rest of Australia, the Canberra region is in the grip of a major skills crisis. We need urgent investment in our skills base and not some bizarre obsession by this government with their industrial relations agenda, which is ruling how these colleges may or may not come on stream. Unlike the Howard government, we would work with the states and territories to implement the necessary advances in technical training, particularly through our secondary school and TAFE systems around the nation. Australia absolutely needs a more systematic approach to addressing our skills needs than what is being offered by the technical colleges program. It is a very important issue and one that we should be able to deal with in a competent, honest and progressive way.

I talk to people from around the country, and business owners, students and the local Canberra Chamber of Commerce alike speak about the need for training opportunities to address the skills crisis and to improve employment opportunities for Australian workers. As the examples I have given show, it is no different in my own region. We need skills training and we need it now. We do not need a government that will only come up with a solution if it fits a box of a particular shape and size. If it does not fit, then it fails to get legs; it does not get an opportunity. I really hope that the government can see its way to liberating itself and allowing these colleges to come on stream quickly if that is what they want to do and to not criticising this side of the parliament when we come up with ideas and views about how we might implement programs in this country to improve the skills shortage. I thank CIT for the examples they have given. I hope that we see honest investment in the tertiary level of education so that vocational training can actually improve and that we see absolute determination to attack the skills crisis in this country in a bipartisan and honest fashion.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006 and the amendment moved by the shadow minister for education and training. I concur with the member for Canberra that much of the motivation of the government in relation to this matter has been driven by an ideological blindness—its hatred of collective agreements and unions. That was clear from day 1, when it was a condition of the establishment of colleges that they offer Australian workplace agreements. Never mind the title of the Work Choices legislation introduced by the government. In relation to this matter, in an area of the education and training portfolio, the government is using taxpayers’ money to force people onto particular industrial instruments whether they want to be part of that or not. There is no choice at all. I have said that time and time again.

This is, of course, the third opportunity I have had to speak about the Australian technical colleges proposition. It is the second amendment to the original bill that was moved in this place in 2005. It arose from policy on the run by the Prime Minister during the 2004 election when, out of the blue, and probably written on the back of a beer coaster, the Prime Minister put a proposition together which had no comprehensive detail whatsoever. It was just a suggestion so that there could be a slogan or a media release for the election that was held in late 2004.

Notwithstanding the way in which the government has chosen to go about introducing Australian technical colleges, I can assure the government and every member here that I will do everything I can to ensure that the Sunshine Australian Technical College will be a success. Whilst I do not accept the premise upon which it has been established, and I do not accept the way in which the government has decided to introduce pernicious provisions that force employees—teachers and other ancillary staff—to be on individual contracts, I want to see more young people in western Melbourne given the opportunity to acquire the skills they need to maintain employment for their working lives. So I will do everything I can to ensure that does occur.

As I indicated yesterday to Andrew Wilkinson, the appointed chief executive officer and principal of the Sunshine college—a fledgling college but one that has at least commenced—I want to visit him and speak with him about what we can do to increase the number of students who are there. At the moment, there is a very small cohort of students; it is nowhere near the target of 300 that the Prime Minister and the former Minister for Vocational and Technical Education indicated in their speeches. But if any young person in western Melbourne can successfully finish an accredited course and improve their opportunities for work, I will certainly support that.

It is not surprising to me that the government has paid lip-service to this area. As I said earlier, it started with a media release during an election campaign. From that point on, there was an effort by the government to backfill and to develop some plan around that media release. It was left to the former Minister for Vocational and Technical Education to explain why the government had not properly considered the way in which this should be done. Indeed, the last opportunity the former minister had to speak as a minister in this place was when he introduced this bill, which will amend the substantive legislation that was introduced and passed in 2005. One would have to ask: if this policy is as successful as government members claim, why is it that the Prime Minister chose to sack that minister? Why is it that the member for Moreton now finds himself on the back bench after overseeing this area of policy? Why was he not even afforded the opportunity to be a quasi-minister—one of those assistant minister positions that have been given to the members for Parkes and Sturt? The member for Moreton has been sacked from the front bench halfway through the process of developing the Australian technical colleges. We have to conclude either that the Prime Minister and the government consider this area of policy an abject failure and they are embarrassed about failing to properly construct these colleges or that the former minister was asked to resign for other reasons—perhaps so that we would be able to see the theatrical genius of the member for Wentworth.

The point is this: the former minister was to oversee the 24 colleges announced by the Prime Minister during the election in 2004, he introduced the bill in 2005, he introduced an amendment in 2006, and he introduced this amendment to the substantive legislation on 7 December last year—the last day of sitting last year. Between his introducing this bill into this place and our debating it today, the former minister has been dismissed by the Prime Minister of this country. We have to wonder why that occurred. I have to say: I do not know what is in the head of the Prime Minister with respect to why he dismissed the former minister, but I can understand some disquiet amongst government members about the failure of the Australian technical colleges insofar as their being developed and being on-stream for young people across this nation.

We heard last year that there was a so-called ATC established in Gladstone which had one student being trained—and the government had the cheek to call that a college. I would not call that a college. I would say good luck to the one student who was being taught and trained, if that were the case, but clearly this is an example of failure by this government to fulfil the commitments that were uttered by the Prime Minister during the 2004 election. The government has failed to fulfil those.

Whilst there might well be 16 of the 24 Australian technical colleges commencing in some way, shape or form by the end of this year, that is hardly sufficient for those areas that are crying out for these types of resources. There are young people across the nation in regional and rural Australia, and in the area that I represent in western Melbourne, who need to acquire skills. We know the government concede there is a skills shortage. They choose not to blame themselves; it is always somebody else’s fault. But there seems to be a consensus that this country has a skills shortage and the government seek to boast that they might at some point, by the end of this year, have 16 of 24 colleges commencing. I do not think that is good enough. If we do have a crisis, and I think it is fair to say that we do have a crisis in the area of skills shortages in workplaces across this country, then the government must attend to that crisis in a much more expeditious manner than the way in which they have treated this area.

That is one of the problems Labor has with this. Clearly, there has been an attempt to entwine the need to spend money in this area—technical learning and the technical skills that are required—with the government’s pursuit of individual contracts. As the member for Canberra indicated, that has probably caused some delay because there would be some people who would not join a consortia that would force employees to sign individual contracts. That might be one of the reasons. The other main reason for the failure by the government to get these 24 colleges up quickly enough is that it has not sincerely concerned itself with the plight of young Australians and their needs in the area of skills.

The government has sacked the minister who was responsible for this area and replaced him with a new minister. Whilst I feel for the member for Morton—because I cannot see, on the face of it, why he was worse than many others in discharging his duties—I hope the new minister listens to the concerns that we have in this place and acts to respond to the problems that we have highlighted—in particular, in the case of Sunshine Australian Technical College, providing every resource to that college and to the partners that are involved in that project to accelerate the number of places that are available for young people in western Melbourne as quickly as possible. No doubt members that represent constituents wherever these colleges are located would feel the same as I do, because it is not good enough for the government to talk about a target of 300 young people to be trained in a college and then for the member of the particular area to find that the target seems to be a long way off and that there is no guarantee that the target will be fulfilled.

So there needs to be more assistance provided to the people in these colleges. I am not in any way pointing the finger at the people who are attempting to establish this at the college level. I am sure many of them are very good education providers, with a history of teaching. I wish them well but I think the government has to now match its rhetoric about attending to the skills crisis in this country and to match its rhetoric about its concerns for the young people and their needs to be properly skilled so that they can be gainfully employed through their entire working lives. These are the things that the government needs to do, and they have not satisfied me or the other members on this side.

The purpose of this bill is to provide for an additional $112 million, between the years of 2005 and 2009, for the establishment and operation of the ATCs—in other words, to add an extra $112 million to the original budget. Agreements have been signed, as I understand it, for establishing 21 of the 24 colleges that were proposed. I understand that five commenced last year and 16 will be in operation by the end of 2007. What I need to know and what I am sure other members would like to know is what ‘in operation’ means. Is it like the case of Gladstone, where we are talking about one student in a college, or is it about more than one?

I think it is probably fair for the government to start giving us the numbers of students that are being placed into these colleges. The questions that I have for the new Minister for Vocational and Further Education are: what is the target enrolment for the Sunshine Australian Technical College; how was this target determined; how many students have actually enrolled this year; how many teachers have been employed at the Sunshine Australian Technical College; how many of those teachers have been employed using Australian workplace agreements; what is the total cost of running the Sunshine Australian Technical College; what, if any, new facilities have been constructed or are planned to be reconstructed on the Sunshine ATC site; and, what is the cost and/or projected cost of these facilities?

Those are some of the questions that I will be placing on the Notice Paper and directing to the minister. I would be much happier if he were able to respond to me in summing up the legislation. I do not hold out much hope of that happening but I will certainly formally direct those questions about my concerns about the Sunshine Australian Technical College to the minister.

This has been a disaster from the beginning. I think the intent in terms of getting young people into the colleges is good; however, it was conceived in a very rash manner. It was conceived in order to provide for an election campaign media release that would create a spin to show the Howard government concerning itself with people needing technical skills. Then it had a little bit of a twist to it because it also coercively required employees to be forced onto Australian workplace agreements. Those things have led to a failure to fulfil the demands that are out there.

As I said, if taxpayers’ dollars are going to be spent looking after young people in my electorate, I will do everything I can to assist. I was there on 1 March 2005 when the then minister came to my electorate to announce the college. I was not notified—I have to make that clear—but I did find out that the minister was coming to the electorate of Gorton, I was in attendance, I spoke to the minister at that time and I said I would assist and I would be constructive. I will continue to be so on the ground, but I will need to see that the government is fair dinkum about these colleges and that it really will be looking to increase the amount of students that will be trained at the Sunshine Technical College before I can start to convince others that this government has a great concern about our young people and their needs.

Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006, which seeks to appropriate another $112.6 million for the establishment and operation of the Howard government’s Australian technical colleges network. The total funding under the act for the period 2005-09 will come to a grand sum of $456.2 million once this legislation is passed—half a billion dollars of investment, and of course too little to show for it. I have to say, having worked a lifetime in education, that half a billion dollars well directed into the good things that are happening in schools, TAFEs, industry, partnerships and cluster networks would have been exceptionally well spent; but with this, unfortunately, we look at that half a billion dollars and say, ‘Where has it gone?’

We are not opposing this bill. I will be supporting the amendment moved by the member for Perth because we do need to make a close examination of the government’s failures in skills and vocational education and training, and its neglect of the TAFE sector. We need to examine the failure of this government to deliver outcomes in skills and the wasted opportunities that have been associated with the ATC program.

These technical colleges were announced at the 2004 election. The public get cynical about election cycles these days. They do not perhaps believe that what is offered will always deliver the best outcomes or even be delivered, and this one is pretty typical. In the 2004 election framework the Howard government finally woke up to the skills crisis, which has been costing our economy millions for some time. The announcement was typically just a political fix. It has now taken three years to get that political solution, that political fix, off the ground, and it still will not produce a graduate until 2010. The world moves on and unfortunately the government does not seem to reflect reality and the real world very often.

Seven months ago I spoke on a similar bill. It also appropriated more money for the ATC scheme and was another indication of how the implementation of this scheme has been mishandled. It is looking very dangerously like the Job Network roll-out, with continual bailouts of money, money, money with very little change, and that is regrettable. The scheme is, unfortunately, a duplication of resources which could be better used in existing structures like TAFEs and traditional apprenticeships. That is the approach Labor will take in government.

The Howard government is on an absolute mission. It is entering into a kind of federalism that I think the public of Australia will not welcome. You cannot just use the big stick. You cannot just decide you will have a federal tier of operation when state operations are already out there. The public are sick of duplication, and schemes like the Australian technical colleges just create a duplicate layer of administration. They do not exist in cooperation with any of the existing state structures like TAFEs, which do such a wonderful job, and they do not at this stage tap in well to those wonderful industry links that exist in hardworking regions—regions that have always had investment in skills as their priority.

They were set up with a great emphasis on exclusion, not inclusion. For example, when it was announced in my electorate that ATCs were going to be become a possible solution, the whole field in Newcastle looked at it in the cooperative way they always do. There were thoughts that our TAFE; our manufacturing industry cluster group, HunterNet; and the group training companies that run off that industry cluster group would look at that and say, ‘How can we take this and make it really work for the Hunter?’ But they found that there is an ideological barrier linked into this legislation. They found that the government has written into this legislation some restrictions. You cannot put in for this if you are going to employ staff members and not use AWAs. That is a problem, as the government knew, for state TAFE systems. The liability and insurances that are necessary to run any business or any technical college do not have synergy or compatibility with state government liability requirements. So already it is set up to deliver on an ideological approach rather than deliver outcomes. What a limitation that this country does not need. Here we have a real problem and not a real solution.

Not only is it duplication of existing programs; it is a very minor response. Nationwide this scheme is expected to cater for a maximum of 7,500 students by 2009. Monash University in its research recently estimated that there will be a shortfall of 270,000 people with technical level qualifications over the next decade—7,500 just ain’t gonna cut it. What a pity. The Australian Industry Group says that 86 per cent of occupations require a postsecondary qualification, yet only about 50 per cent of Australians have this level of training. There are no programs to improve those sorts of movements into postsecondary education or technical education, and, despite all those clear warnings, the Howard government has managed to turn away 300,000 people from the nation’s TAFEs in the past 10 years. That might have just about done it for that shortfall of 270,000 people in the next decade. One would have hoped that those figures might have eventually had a match, but, no, we have the ideological solution.

There always has been and always will be strong support in my region for people involved in training and skilling the young people of Newcastle and the Hunter, including those who will be involved in working in the new technical colleges and including those people who will be hiring apprentices and working, we hope, in some sort of collaboration with industry, the TAFE and the university—who we already have great respect for. No matter what our views on the program—and I think I am making mine quite clear—or on the government’s administration of this program, we all need to be behind anything and anyone in these settings who is working to skill our people. That is a commitment all of us in regional seats and seats around Australia who will have technical colleges give. We are not spoilers; we are always about finding better outcomes.

My region has traditionally done great things in the training sector, and it will continue to do so. For example, this year the Hunter Valley Training Company at Maitland will employ a record 120 first-year apprentices in the region in trades such as electrical, boiler making and mechanical. Over its 25 years of operation, it has already put 15,000 apprentices and trainees into workplaces. Hunter TAFE is this year offering a certificate IV course in electrotechnology, giving students the skills to install and maintain renewable energy equipment. What we are actually saying is: ‘That climate change crisis that the other side of this chamber has just discovered has been around for so long, we’re actually now trying to be part of solutions.’ It is a certificate IV course just for students maintaining very new and very innovative equipment that is actually about renewable energy. That is absolutely a skill of the future.

But in this government we have never seen flexibility. We never see it; we see a one-size-fits-all approach to policy. We never hear them say: ‘Let’s find what’s good that is happening out there and value add to it. Let’s add to the abilities, capabilities and innovations that are driving our economy, in ordinary businesses and industry sectors all around the country.’ Instead we hear: ‘No, we don’t want to do that. We just want to have an ideological, political fix.’ But the kind of innovation that Hunter TAFE is developing is part of the reason the institute’s apprentice enrolments have risen by about 38 per cent over the past five years. It is the largest provider of TAFE-delivered vocational education and training for senior secondary students in the state, enrolling more than 2,800 students every year. This year it is offering about 30 extra trade classes to cater for the increased demand in fields such as engineering, metal fabrication, fitting, machining and electrical trades.

The other thing that the government does not seem to ever want to pick up on is just what is happening out there between TAFEs and universities. The Hunter Institute and the University of Newcastle have a wonderful relationship. They have managed to do articulation and pathways under a special project between their courses. You can go to TAFE in my region, and then you can go on to university. They have actually sat down and worked out those ways. You can go to university and go back to TAFE to get those practical skills. Those sorts of pathways and articulations are the sorts of models that everyone else is adopting—trying to find solutions and benefiting many students. But, of course, this government has not even thought about it.

Energy Australia is expected to take on about 600 apprentices in my region over the next four years. Hunter Group Training Australia, one of our region’s training companies, expects to hire around 150 apprentices by the end of the 2007 financial year. Neville Sawyer, someone in my electorate I am very fond of working with, is formerly the chair of the Australia Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Last year he was appointed to the National Industry Skills Council and was also awarded the Hunter Manufacturers Awards board award at last year’s awards ceremony. Neville’s contribution to industry and training in our region is huge, and I congratulate him. I can only say: thank goodness for someone with such a realistic background, real experience in industry and real experience in training. He was formerly the managing director of Ampcontrol, a company that has responded to the skills crisis by taking on apprentices, by reintroducing cadetships to make sure that its apprentices and employees have the opportunity to go on to further studies, and by setting up a research chair and entity at the Newcastle university. These are the standout things that are happening, and all this government can offer is the Australian technical college solution.

So the Hunter Institute, the TAFE, the university, training companies, businesses and industry cluster groups are well aware of the skills shortage and have been doing what they can to actively alleviate it for some time. Sadly, the government’s program is really too limited to make much difference.

In my area, the ATC will be administered by the Hunter Valley Training Company and the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle. Both those groups, fortunately, have a great track record in delivering education services and training services, and they are the joint proponents. They will operate out of Newcastle, Maitland and Singleton. But what a pity they are not going to be able to tap into the resources, facilities and infrastructure that are already there.

The Newcastle campus of the ATC, in my electorate, is beginning this year with a temporary facility. I do not know if anyone from the government has walked into any TAFEs lately, but when you walk in and see state-of-the-art labs to train mechanics working in the aerospace industry, you know that a temporary facility is really the second-best option. I would encourage the minister in this area to go and have a look at the sorts of modern facilities that cost big bucks that are in our TAFEs today. So starting off in a temporary facility is slightly disappointing. The Singleton campus struggled to meet its enrolment targets last year until publicity was given by the region, knowing how important it is to solve our skills crisis. This lifted it and got some interest going. It shows how difficult it is to start a whole new training system from scratch, and it gives us an idea of why the government has had to come back twice now to ask for more money, just to get these ATCs up and running.

This year the department projects the Hunter’s ATC will enrol 150 students. I have just mentioned how many kids are out there doing apprenticeships already, and it is in the thousands. This is a very small effort. It is projected by the department to have 360 students by 2009. That is not really a mass solution or application. And, of course, even though hopefully those students will finish and go on to work in our industries, it is going to be tough for them.

What has happened in Newcastle? There are some implications of the skills shortage that remind us that if you do not invest in education and if you do not invest in skills then you compound the problem. In my electorate, teenage unemployment is 28.9 per cent. These kids would all love the opportunity to gain skills. The Hunter Valley Training Company, which I mentioned previously, received 1,000 applications for first-year apprentices this year. In engineering we need qualified people to work in the manufacturing, engineering and mining industries that, despite changes over recent decades, still underpin much of our economic prosperity. We have an excellent reputation and history already in this area, with the University of Newcastle ranked in the top 100 universities in the world for engineering technology. That occurs because of the collaboration with and involvement of industry and because of the ability of the TAFE to work with the university.

We have reached a crisis point in terms of engineers in the Hunter, as we have in Australia. As an example, a company recently put an advertisement in national newspapers for six engineers. They had not one applicant or response—not one. Everybody out there is already utilised. Companies in the region are recruiting from overseas—they have no choice—and certainly they are all headhunting from each other. It is quite amazing to work with that industry sector and come to know that they really are very pressed. John Vines, the Chief Executive of the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers Australia, recently wrote in the Newcastle Herald that engineering courses—and remember that many of our TAFE apprentices move on to those courses—will this year attract HECS fees of up to $28,500. He suggested that you could halt some of the current trends and get more kids into this field by lowering some of those HECS fees. You will know that Labor has committed to lowering the HECS fees for maths and science, which underpin all those areas. That is a great approach. This government has not committed to education in any way and has not invested in a skilled work force. That is very different to Labor’s approach.

At the moment, the combined HECS debt of graduates in the Hunter region—and I am talking about graduates—is $100 million. You have to wonder if we have been doing the right thing there. Labor understands that those HECS fees are a factor in the skills shortage and that we can do something about them, and we must. According to the Australian Council of Deans of Science in the Hunter, three in four schools struggle to recruit qualified mathematics teachers. We really look forward to Labor’s policy initiative, which supports maths and science improvements in our area.

When you look back to what the government are doing with the ATCs, it shows a lack of understanding of the cycle of getting a young person from high school into a skilled job. That is why the ATCs are of concern to me. They do not understand that you have to invest in schools so that they have the resources with which to teach vocational education. You have to also engage those kids in what, while it is an exciting industry, is an industry that has been talked down over the years. Locally, most members of our business chamber visit schools and encourage kids to get to know more about the manufacturing and engineering occupations and opportunities. That is only one part of the cycle. When you get them into an apprenticeship, you have to train them professionally. You have to engage their parents and you have to mentor them all through that process, because there is no age like 16 to 20 for life experiences that can distract from work. That sort of commitment is also needed, but you do not see anything written into the ATCs about the wonderful mentoring programs that our group training companies run.

The big issue for us is that, if this government continues to provide token solutions to the skills crisis, productivity in this country will continue to diminish. Commentators recently have pointed out that if it were not for the increase to our economy from the resources boom we would be in deficit. You have to wonder why, when we are living in the middle of an industrial revolution, this government has ignored the opportunity to build needed new education and training infrastructure. This does not do it. This bill is typical of that approach. It is wrong. It is the wrong solution to a very real problem. It delivers the government’s ideology in a way that restricts participation. It misses out on so much good and does not value add to what is already excellent in many regions, particularly in my region—Newcastle and the Hunter.

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006. This bill provides for additional funding over the next four years. The funding for Australian Technical Colleges is increased by $112 million to $456 million. I also rise to support the amendment that has been moved by the honourable member for Perth. In our state of New South Wales, education and vocational education are run out of one department. Previously, they were separate departments but they have been amalgamated. That is a good thing. They were amalgamated a few years ago and, ultimately, hopefully, that will result in teachers at TAFEs and schools being able to be interchanged much more readily than historically was the case.

I regret to say that we on this side of the House are often verballed about education matters. In relation to teachers, in question time today the Minister for Education, Science and Training announced that she:

... will be taking to the next state education ministers’ meeting a number of proposals relating to greater principal autonomy and ensuring that we have an element of performance based pay for teachers. We must attract, retain and reward the very best teachers. They are professionals. Let us treat them as professionals.

I personally do not have a problem with that. But the minister was also asked whether or not the Commonwealth had allocated any money to allow this to occur when she goes to the meeting of ministers. I regret to say that the minister really did not answer the question. Alternatively, by her failing to provide a figure, we can only assume that no money will be provided. I do not have difficulty in developing a bipartisan approach to the great sweep of educational issues confronting this nation. I never have. I certainly believe very much in accountability—in the accountability of educational institutions and in the results that they deliver for the students being on the public record. I think we need the best of teachers. I think teachers should be well rewarded, and I do not have difficulty with the concept of performance pay.

I know that the member for Prospect is here in the chamber, and I am sure he would agree with me that one of the great gifts of wealth that Western Sydney has is its young people. Western Sydney proudly constitutes about one-tenth of the population of Australia. It is a vast region and, I might say, a region with its differences. It is not homogenous. But we have a lot of young people, we are very proud of them and we want the best for them.

Traditionally, vocational trades have been very strong in Western Sydney. We have a vast network of TAFEs, and they have done a good job. In my own case, at Mount Druitt, not far from my electorate office, is Mount Druitt TAFE. I have forgotten the precise figure, but it has something between 7,000 and 8,000 effective full-time places. I have seen it grow from a sod-turning exercise. I think it has now had about its 10th expansion. It is doing good and growing strong. Of course, if you are a federal member out in Western Sydney, because there are so many young people, education is a big issue. It is an issue that I have been happy to pursue throughout my parliamentary career to date. I should have mentioned that, by the year 2016, more than half of Sydney’s population will be located in Western Sydney.

In Western Sydney, with one-tenth of the population of Australia, we have one of these colleges. Like my colleagues on this side of the House, I am not convinced that this is the best way to address vocational education, but the government has moved in this direction. How good is it?

I can state for the record that there is a college. There was an original proposal which, unhappily in my view, was withdrawn, but now the new ATC will be located at Rouse Hill. I do appreciate that in different parts of Australia people have to travel a long way to access services. But for the whole of Western Sydney to try and access a service being provided at Rouse Hill is indeed quite a challenge. If people are located in Liverpool, Cabramatta, the Blue Mountains or Campbelltown, trying to travel across Western Sydney to Rouse Hill, which is not centred at any particular transport node, does present difficulties.

In the newspaper there has been some criticism that you have 25 places and only 20 are filled. I am happy to accept the new principal’s word that indeed 25 places in this Western Sydney ATC will be filled. But, Mr Speaker, I am sure you would agree with me that providing 25 places at the Rouse Hill ATC to service the whole of Western Sydney is not exactly going to cause a revolution in the provision of vocational training for young people in Western Sydney. I am not saying that it is not welcome, but it would require real creative genius to parlay 25 places as some sort of vocational education revolution in Western Sydney. I certainly hold that view.

I probably should not go into the details of the original—and I think very innovative—proposal that was submitted by the Parramatta diocese and was initially successful. It was going to have three locations. It was going to utilise existing facilities and portable facilities, and that would have meant that students could more than readily access them. It was not going to be just a very limited skill area that they were hoping to provide for students; it was a very exciting proposal involving quite a number of different master associations—master builders, plumbers, et cetera. Yes, it was having difficulties, but it had been thoroughly thought through. Proposals and agreements were being made to ensure that it had proper state approval. Unlike many of my colleagues, I would have probably preferred that that original proposal was given more time to come to fruition, because I think that, in the short to medium term, it would have had greater impact.

Debate interrupted.