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

I only have a short time, but I do want to utilise this time to brag about the wonderful visit that I paid last week to the apprenticeship and trade college for southern Perth in Western Australia. On that visit I was accompanied by the Hon. Alannah MacTiernan MLA, the member for Armadale. It was a good news visit. When we got there, we were met by Messrs Rod Slater, who is Chairman of the Australian Technical College—Perth South, and Trevor Williams, the principal. The reason for our visit was that the government, under Deputy Prime Minister Gillard, had committed to keeping the former Australian technical college open and renaming it the Apprenticeship and Trade College—Perth South. It will have campuses in Armadale and also in Maddington in the federal seat of Hasluck.

Before I go any further, I want to spend the short time that I have allotted to me to talk about the wonderful young students that Ms MacTiernan, the member for Armadale, and I met. At that stage there were five young men—as you will realise, a lot of them were still on holidays. With the extra funding from the federal government that has now guaranteed the school a full and healthy life, it is catering for 363 students. The beauty of this college is that it is also going to become a registered training organisation and is offering certificate III level courses in skills shortage areas, including automotive building and construction, metal and engineering, and electrotechnology. The college also plans to commence operations as a group training organisation.

As a quick demographic overview, Armadale is in the foothills of Western Australia. It is a very solid working-class area but is a distance from Perth. To have this trade college guaranteed a full life and a brand new building is a wonderful story. The five students that we met were five very fine young men who certainly told their representative members of parliament what they thought on all things, ranging from the skills shortage to their apprenticeship to why they did not have a skate park in the town of Armadale—about which the member said, ‘You’ll have to talk to the new government; it was on our list at the next election, so we hope that it still gets delivered.’