Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you Acting Deputy President Edwards, and I congratulate you on your recent elevation as acting chair. I join with my leader in expressing the sentiment that the only way in which Australia in the future is going to be able to retire the massive debt that is now around our necks is to have as fully employed and as highly skilled a workforce as we possibly can. Regrettably, the legislation before us this evening falls far short in its objective to achieve this. As Senator Abetz has said, the coalition will not oppose this legislation, but I assure you that it needs radical improvement before it is actually to achieve anywhere near the sort of objective that is necessary for this country.

The seeds of failure were sown not in the life of the Gillard government, or even the Rudd government. The seeds of failure were sown way back in the time of the Hon. Kim Beazley Sr. And if that sowing was not sufficiently poor for the Australian workplace and for skills development at that time, it was perpetuated in the time of the Hon. John Dawkins. It is no pleasure for me that both parliamentarians were from Western Australian. There is a simple reason behind this. There was a time when it was recognised in our country that there were those who should aspire to professional qualifications and studies in the universities, and there were those who should aspire to the technical and trades areas because of their levels of interest and perhaps their capacity at the time at which those decisions were made. I am talking now, back in the 1970s and beyond, of young boys, particularly at the age of 15 or 16 years, for whom a year 11-12 education at that time in their lives was not what they were aspiring to. But, unfortunately, where they should have been directed into the technical colleges and into technical and other trades training where they would have been well suited and would have achieved tremendous success and gone on to very successful careers, whether as employers, as business people or as tradesman employees, we had a circumstance, commenced by then Beazley Sr, and perpetuated by Dawkins, in which that was put to one side. We then perforce moved to a scenario in which these students were initially influenced to and then forced to remain on to years 11 and 12 at school and then to aspire to university style education.

What we see in 2012 is the end result of that poor policy decision making. Perversely, what we see is that many of the jobs that should have been occupied by those young people who should have been directed into technical colleges and trades training areas, and would today be undertaking those trades skills and contributing that to our Australian economy, are now in the main being occupied by 457 visa holders, who we have had to bring in from overseas as a result of this vacuum. That is where the fundamental error has taken place.

So what has happened? We have seen burgeoning numbers of students going into the universities and perforce, and of necessity, we have seen a decline in the standards of entry at many of our universities. This has assisted nobody, but particularly those who should never have been pushed or encouraged into, almost forced into, university-level training for degrees for which there is little employment, particularly in the terms of financial and career progression reward, which they may have aspired to had they gone through the alternative path. That is where we need to reverse the trend we see today.

Just in the last seven months we have participated in inquiries in the agriculture and agribusiness higher education and skills training areas. I look forward to presenting to the Senate this week the final report of that inquiry. At the same time the Education, Employment and Workplace Relations References Committee has undertaken an inquiry into the equivalent, if you like: the engineering professional, technical and trades skills areas. I wish to comment on the latter. It was incredibly disturbing to the committee to learn from Engineers Australia that their best guess is a cost to the Australian taxpayer each year at the moment of some $7 billion on infrastructure projects that were poorly described, the tender processes were inadequately undertaken—or successful tenderers selected—the projects were poorly implemented, or they had to go back and rework failed projects. That is a $7 billion a year cost to the Australian taxpayer, since most infrastructure projects are in fact publicly funded.

When I say that we are looking at a wide gap, I refer back to my earlier comments, because the seed for the failure that has reflected itself in that $7 billion was found at a time when people should have been directed into technical training and into skills training but were in fact directed into university-level training. That is the best example I can give, and the most current example I can give you, of the failure of the legislation we see attempting to be addressed in this bill here this evening.

The Skills Australia Amendment (Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency) Bill 2012 is too little, too late, and it fails to address the fundamentals. It fails to address the cause of why we are where we are today. Why is it that a country as wealthy as Australia, a country with the education system that we have, has failed its participants? It has failed its students, it is failing its teachers, it is failing its academics, it is failing industry and it is failing the Australian community and the Australian taxpayer. For the life of me, I cannot see why this should be so.

As a person who has worked in Asia, the Middle East and India over the last 15 to 20 years, I have seen where their deficiencies lie. Their deficiencies are not those of our country. If you drive on a road in India, you can see where their infrastructure failures are. Ours is a country that surely should be a model—it should be right up the top. And yet we unfortunately see, starting with education, with failures of policy, the end result—where we are today.

Only last Wednesday, a week ago tomorrow, I was 600 metres underground at the Tindal gold mine in Coolgardie. There would probably be those who might wonder whether it would be wiser, Senator Farrell—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President—that I never came out of the mine!