Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Monday morning I was privileged to attend the opening of the new Australian Technical College North Queensland in Townsville. We have probably delivered in Townsville the best ATC in the nation. The quality of the new facility and the quality of the training that it will deliver is quite extraordinary. From go to whoa, it took 12 months to set up the college on a greenfield site—to get it designed, to get it built and to get the students enrolled. On Monday, 149 students attended the opening of the college.

The infrastructure and facilities provided are second to none. Because industry has been very much hands-on in the development of the curriculum and training, we have been able to place in the college all of the equipment that industry thinks desirable. It is state of the art. It is absolutely up to date; it is modern. But more than that, the teaching methods will also follow; what we do currently is best practice. In fact, a lot of it will be e-learning. It will be done off memory sticks rather than books in the college classrooms. You can actually drive cars into the classrooms so that the students can be there with the teacher working on the cars in the classroom. It is an absolutely outstanding thing that we have been able to deliver. Industry is very happy because we are delivering exactly the skill sets that they want.

I am disappointed that the Labor Party has basically announced that if they get into power they will give the Australian technical colleges back to the TAFE system and we will go back 30 years. That is just extraordinarily backward. In this nation, you have to think forward. You have to think about what is needed and what the best methods of training are. I invite any member of the Labor Party to come to Townsville and have a look at this new model to see how well it works, why it works well and why it is head and shoulders above the TAFE system. I will fight tooth and nail to make sure that the ATCs deliver on the model that they are contracted to deliver on. Indeed, our technical college in Townsville will expand. It is probably going to double in size, and that will be a fantastic result.