Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to speak about the threat of the Liberal Party removing funding from trade training centres in my electorate of Deakin and right across Australia. As members of the House would know, the Rudd government’s trade training centres were a 2007 election commitment that has since been put into action. This is 10-year, $2.5 billion program that provides for a trade training centre at every secondary school in Australia or, alternatively, larger pooled facilities that are shared between schools.

In my electorate of Deakin there is an excellent hospitality trade training centre being built at Aquinas College in Ringwood. This $1.5 million project was announced in March 2009. It is being built in conjunction with other works at the school and will be opened in a few short months. This project is safe, as much as I can understand from the incomprehensible dribble of the Liberals’ budget reply. Initially avoided by the opposition leader, hospital-passed by the shadow Treasurer and eventually squeezed out of a very reticent shadow finance minister at the National Press Club, this project is not—I think—in jeopardy of directly suffering from the Liberal Party’s attack on education.

However, the rest of the secondary schools in my electorate of Deakin have not been spared from this attack from the Liberals. Schools such as Ringwood Secondary College, Heathmont College, Norwood Secondary, Mullauna Secondary College, Blackburn High, Forest Hill College, Southwood Grammar, even Tintern Girls Grammar and Nunawading Christian College will miss out if the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, has his way. Many of these schools have been working very hard to form consortiums so they can offer greater training benefits to their students, and they have applied for funding as a school cluster so they can have a larger facility. But this sloppy policy of education cuts that the shadow Treasurer, Joe Hockey, avoided making personally at the National Press Club now directly threatens the future of every trade training centre in my electorate, except the one that I have spoken about.

It is not only schools in my electorate that are under threat—it is schools in neighbouring electorates and right across Australia. By ripping out $968 million of funding over four years, the Liberal Party would ensure that students Australia-wide were denied the chance of trade training whilst at school. Just across the Dandenong Creek from the electorate of Deakin lies the neighbouring electorate of Aston, and right on the creek boundary is Bayswater Secondary College. I know this school pretty well. I went there when it was called Bayswater High School. That was many, many years ago but it has not changed all that much, except that there were fewer students there in those days. Bayswater secondary is in a school cluster with Rowville Secondary College, Boronia Heights College, in Latrobe, Fairhills High School, Scoresby Secondary College, Wantirna College and Waverley Christian College. They have received approval to build a trade training centre on the Swinburne University Wantirna campus to train students in engineering, manufacturing, lab skills and electrical skills. That was announced on 9 November as part of a $66 million funding allocation to Victorian secondary schools in round 2 of the Trade Training Centres in Schools Program. The combined project is around $10.5 million but, as the project has not yet commenced, it is danger of every last dollar been taken away by the Liberal Party with their promised cuts to the trade training centre program to start in the 2010-11 financial year.

If it was up to Liberal Party, not one school would have a trade training centre and not one student would have an opportunity to get a school based start to learning a trade—the basis for a lifetime of productive work. A skilled trade can form the basis of so many career options, in Australia and overseas. Trades are in short supply as Australia cries out for skilled tradespeople. As a qualified electrician, I know very well the value of a trade. I worked as an electrician for more than 20 years before becoming a member of this place.

If it is left to the Liberals, there will be high demand for, but no supply of, tradespeople—schoolchildren will not get the opportunity to learn the skills through trade training centres. Our community would benefit from these centres not only in education but also in the provision of jobs during the building of the centres. It is certainly true that we need more skilled tradespeople in Australia—we are desperately short. Measures that the Liberal Party put up to take money out of education are a disgrace. They should look at themselves very closely. (Time expired)