Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, great. You should be very proud. I am proud of what our government is doing; I am proud of the announcement; I am proud of the people of Armadale and all those students who have the opportunity to go to this training centre to learn their skills—and they are actually being paid a training wage as well. It is fantastic. When they come out of the centre they will do the first year of their apprenticeship. They will be job ready. The training centre will also be, as I said, a registered training organisation, which means it is a host employer. The apprentices will not just be thrown out on the scrapheap and told that in Perth the streets are lined with gold—‘Go west, young man, and you will be rich, but as a government we’re not going to spend any money on training.’ We will never do that.

I commend the people involved. I commend the chairman, Mr Slater, and the principal, Trevor Williams. They were so very proud of the Rudd Labor government’s announcement that it would keep their organisation going and do everything it could to continue the growth in skills training.