Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Science and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to this debate on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006. Before commencing, I really should declare my interest, which is the fact that I spent 10 years in the TAFE system. So I do understand that TAFEs used to be resourced and had the capacity to very flexibly respond to industry needs. That is not the case any more. I have to say, I think the whole Australian technical colleges scheme is one of the great examples of the incompetence of this government because, despite the skills shortages that the country faces, we can see, as we saw in the May budget this year, that there is absolutely nothing to address the skills needs.

There was no money for TAFE—why were we surprised? There was an overall reduction in the percentage of the budget spent on vocational education and training. There was a $13.7 million cut from a program to encourage apprenticeships in rural and regional areas, and there was the abolition of the $38½ million program aimed at getting more women in non-traditional apprenticeships such as construction and automotive trades. There was no extra money allocated in the next four years for the National Skills Shortages Strategy. So why are we surprised? It beggars belief that this government can neglect Australia’s skills development during a time of such unprecedented prosperity. This government is so out of touch that it has no idea about the hurt that Australian families are feeling now.

Labor supported the original technical colleges bill last year, and we are supporting this amendment bill in order to allow the money to be spent more quickly. But it remains the case that establishing 25 Australian technical colleges is the only answer that the Howard government has to address the chronic skills crisis that Australia is experiencing. It is important that the government seriously addresses the problems that we face now, and will face in the future, in providing the required skilled workforce. Senator Webber focused a little in her remarks on the issues in Western Australia.

Unfortunately, the Howard government has taken a long-term and very problematic approach to the issue. The act proposed establishing 25 technical colleges that would cater for up to 7½ thousand year 11 and 12 students. The government nominated 25 regions across Australia where the colleges were to be placed. In my home state of New South Wales, they were to be located in Gosford, Dubbo, the Hunter, the Illawarra, Lismore, Ballina, Port Macquarie, Queanbeyan and Western Sydney.

Since I started my term in the Senate in 2002, I have observed the Howard government incompetently administer a number of programs, but this one takes the cake. This program has been a dog’s breakfast from the start, and once again we have seen a minister making policy on the run. If we look at progress to date, of those 25 proposed colleges, five have commenced operation. On 31 July, the fifth—the Northern Tasmania College—opened. But, as Senator Webber said, most of them are scheduled for 2007.

There is a difference between having these colleges opened and actually having students attending. During the budget estimates hearings, it was revealed that some of these technical colleges are not exactly enjoying full levels of enrolment. In fact, one—Gladstone Technical College in Queensland—has a grand enrolment total of two students. During Senate estimates, Senator Wong asked Ms Johnston: ‘How many students are currently enrolled at Gladstone?’ Ms Johnston replied: ‘There are only one or two I think at the moment.’ That reflects exactly what is going on in the technical colleges process. At the time of the last election campaign, the Prime Minister said:

The technical colleges are the centrepiece of our drive to tackle skills shortages and to revolutionise vocational education and training throughout Australia.

Heaven help a revolution that has two students enrolled at one of these colleges. The Prime Minister might be good at flowery rhetoric, but the reality of the technical colleges comes nowhere near matching that rhetoric.

The concept of Australian technical colleges is another step in the government’s assault on industrial relations and education. The Australian technical colleges further privatise our education system and potentially they will damage enrolments and available courses at nearby high schools. Individual contracts and performance pay appear to be the modus operandi of the colleges.

The government talks about the fact that local industry and communities will have a leadership role in the governance of the colleges. The colleges will teach the skills required by local business. There is a real danger that the courses will become enterprise rather than industry focused, resulting in young people gaining qualifications that cannot be transported across industries. The real ideological attack is on public education and the government’s underhanded attempt to deregulate the national training system. In abolishing the Australian National Training Authority, the government is increasing the already heavy influence of peak industry bodies such as the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Business Council of Australia.

The prospect of AWAs being forcibly inflicted upon public sector agencies, enshrined in the agencies’ very existence, and upon more Australians betrays the government’s belief that the creeping advance of AWAs is a higher political priority than training our kids for work and providing the economy with the skilled workforce that it needs.

Australia needs a more systematic approach to promoting trades and science and technology education than the government’s 25 technical colleges. If this is the best this government can do, I have no doubt Australians will look to Labor’s plan. Labor will work collaboratively and constructively with the state and territory governments, not start a federal versus state slanging match—as we have seen—to tackle the problem. Labor will provide sound training opportunities to increase the take-up of such training that establishes long-term careers and benefits to industry.

The government should have been spending the last 18 months getting the technical colleges up and running. Instead it has wasted time. It has wasted the past 10 years standing idly by as the looming skills crisis brewed right before its eyes. I am sure it is no surprise to anyone on this side of the chamber to learn that Australia is the only developed country which has actually reduced public investment in TAFEs and universities—in fact, by eight per cent since 1995. The OECD average is an embarrassing 38 per cent increase, yet the best that this government can manage when it comes to investing in knowledge is an appalling eight per cent overall decline.

On budget night we saw yet another wasted opportunity. The Treasurer could have used his $17 billion surplus to invest in the skills of our workforce. Instead he did nothing. The budget was all about the Howard government giving up on increasing productivity by not acting on this skills crisis. It was the Howard government believing that an adequate response to the skills crisis is to have some technical colleges graduate a ridiculous 350 students in 2010. It was the Howard government saying that an eight per cent decrease in public investment in universities and TAFEs is an adequate response. And it was the Howard government saying that stripping the rights of workers through its extreme industrial relations regime is an adequate response.

The Howard government would know this if some of them lived in the real world and asked some real people about it. They should, for example, start by asking the 300,000 Australians they have turned away from university and TAFE whether it is an adequate response. Or they could ask all those workers around Australia who have been sacked and then rehired on less pay and worse conditions whether it is an adequate response. The answer is clearly no. It is not an adequate response; it is a pathetic response.

A real response would be to take up Labor’s proposals to promote skills training in our schools. Under Labor, trades technology and science would be taught in first-class facilities; a Trades in Schools scheme would double the number of school based apprenticeships and provide extra funding per place; specialist schools would be established to teach trades technology and science in senior schools; and a Trades Taster program would allow years 9 and 10 students to experience a range of trade options. We need to give our kids a go at trades in our schools. We need to get them involved early. Labor’s skills-in-schools plan would get them in and Labor’s plan to overhaul the New Apprenticeships scheme would keep them in.

Many senators would be aware that just such a scheme was announced in New South Wales recently. The New South Wales Premier, Morris Iemma, and education minister Carmel Tebbutt announced an initiative that will allow HSC students to complete school based apprenticeships one day a week. Under the plan, 10 stand-alone trade schools will be established over the next 12 months and will create hundreds of apprenticeships and traineeships and tackle local skills shortages. Students will be able to undertake industry standard training in subjects such as hospitality, health care, construction, automotive and engineering. In this way students will gain a trade qualification while completing their HSC.

The plan will see an expansion of vocational education and training programs in schools. Currently, at least 30 per cent of New South Wales HSC students choose at least one VET course for their HSC. Under Labor’s apprenticeships plan, a range of initiatives would be offered to increase the number of young Australians completing their training. These would include an $800 per year skills account, which would help to abolish up-front fees. They would also include a $2,000 trade completion bonus under which apprentices in traditional trades would receive a $1,000 payment halfway through their training and a further $1,000 payment at the completion of their apprenticeship. This scheme will aim to bolster the Howard government’s pathetic 40 per cent apprenticeship completion rate to at least 80 per cent. Labor is also committed to abolishing the Howard government’s skilled migration visa so that young Australians are given the opportunity to train first. Labor’s plan recognises that young Australians are crying out for opportunities and that Australian businesses are crying out for skilled workers, tradespeople, chefs and childcare workers.

This government has deliberately denigrated learning, particularly under the former Minister for Education, Science and Training and now Minister for Defence, Dr Nelson. He developed this technique of appealing to people who have not been to university, particularly less educated older people who grew up in a different era when very few people went to university, and sending out a message saying, ‘All you hardworking Aussies are paying for all these people in universities who don’t really contribute very much to the real world anyway.’ That message from Dr Nelson has been very overt. It has been supplemented by statements from the Prime Minister to the effect that leaving school after year 10 is perfectly reasonable.

In some cases, it is not unreasonable. Of course, in bygone times most people did. There is nothing wrong with that and there is nothing wrong with people who, 20 or 30 years ago, did leave school after year 10 and in many cases went on to develop skills on the job. But that is in the past. It certainly does not make us a productive country, and it is the wrong message to be putting out now to 15-year-olds. It is appalling that government ministers are sending out these powerful signals that are saying that learning does not matter and is really for those pointy-headed types who are not practical. As someone who recently completed a doctorate, I find that an appalling message and it is something that the Howard government will be condemned for.

If there is one thing that is going to ensure that Australia prospers and that we have a broadly based, diverse economy with a strong manufacturing sector and a strong services sector that will continue, it is going to be a profound national commitment to learning in all its forms: learning on the job, learning in TAFE colleges, learning through apprenticeships, learning in universities, learning in schools and learning in preschools. We need a national campaign to instil a much stronger commitment in our community to the values around learning.

As I have said, the Howard government in the most recent budget cut $13.7 million from an incentive program to encourage rural and regional businesses to take on apprentices. This is holding back our regions, where communities are struggling to retain trained people. Australians deserve better than this half-hearted attempt to fix our skills crisis. They deserve a coordinated effort. They deserve COAG—every state premier and the Prime Minister of this nation—getting together to fix the problem.

There is a clear choice before the electorate. There is a distinct point of difference between the do-nothing approach of the Howard government and the Labor Party’s commitment to improving young Australians’ access to and success within the workforce. It is clear this government cannot fix the skills shortage and it is obvious they have given up on it. We in the Labor Party want to see young Australians have access to affordable training, to incentives to work hard and complete their training, to employable skills and to a great future serving their own communities and taking pride in that work and the contribution they make.

That is not what we are seeing from the Howard government. We will only see it from a Labor government, and we have seen it from the New South Wales Labor government, which announced the new trade schools where each trade school will specialise in the trade skills shortages areas identified for the state. Students have the option of undertaking a school based apprenticeship, and apprentices continue their training beyond school for up to three years so they can work in licensed trades such as construction or automotive. Students will have access to specialist industry-standard facilities such as electronic calibrated lathes, commercial quality stoves and modified, safe, construction work sites. School based apprentices and school based trainees will be on the job for approximately one day each week. For the rest of the week, these students will be completing the off-the-job component of their training as well as completing their HSC subjects.

Students will get recognition for all the work they complete. A school based apprentice or trainee who undertakes part-time training in years 11 and 12 will get their qualification a year earlier. They will have access to new industry support services which will place them in jobs to complete their training. We can see that that is a practical approach that will allow industries and local economies to benefit from having more job-ready graduates to take on work in key skills shortage areas. That is not what the Australian technical colleges are going to deliver. They will deliver a paltry number of apprentices, perhaps by 2010, and that is a disgrace.