Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

Labor supports the Education and Training Legislation Repeal Bill 2017. It tidies up legislative instruments which are currently obsolete. The Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia's Skills Needs) Act 2005 underpinned the Australian Technical Colleges program, which was wound up by the end of 2009. Any continuing functions were rolled into the broader education and training system.

Australian technical colleges, or ATCs, were to provide training pathways for year 11 and 12 students while they simultaneously completed a secondary certificate of education. The ATCs were a coalition government creation that proved to be expensive and ineffectual. They suffered from low enrolments, problems sourcing staff and contributed very little to filling the trade shortages that they were funded to reverse. The ATC program was yet another attempt by the government to undermine TAFEs and public schools. The government wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on poorly-thought-through ATCs while underfunding public provision of vocational education and training. Repealing the now obsolete ATC Act serves as a reminder of the coalition's past and current failure to develop and implement a workable means of improving the provision and uptake of trades training.

Since the Abbott-Turnbull government took office there are 148,000 fewer apprentices and trainees in training across Australia, including 46,900 fewer trade apprentices, which is a drop of 22 per cent in trades training. Upon taking office, the government cut funding to trades training centres and got rid of trade cadetships. They have continued to chop and change on vocational education and training in schools policy because they don't care about whether it succeeds or fails. The Skilling Australia's Workforce Act 2005 provided grants to states and territories to support the national training system from 2005 to 2008, after which it was superseded by payment arrangements under the Federal Financial Relations Act 2009 via the National Agreement on Skills and Workforce Development.

While the government is busy repealing obsolete education and training acts, the real business of ensuring ongoing skill development in Australia is being ignored. As it stands, the government still has no agreement with the states or territories to replace the national partnership on skills reform, which expired at the end of June. Both the ATC program and the Skilling Australia's Workforce Act 2005 are reminders of the coalition government's ongoing obsession with destroying unions and compelling organisations to adopt the government's ideologically-driven employment framework. The funding to states and territories under the Skilling Australia's Workforce Act was contingent on a range of ideologically-driven reforms designed to damage TAFEs and education unions such as workplace reforms for increased employment flexibility—yet people pretend that won't be part of the agenda for higher education at the moment—and encouraging the take-up of Australian workplace agreements and performance-based pay.

The then Department of Education, Science and Training's guidelines for Australian technical colleges stated that operators at ATCs were required to offer Australian workplace agreements to all staff, as well as offering performance based pay. The government cut Labor's Trade Training Centres in Schools Program after they came into office in 2013. The government also got rid of trade cadetships, despite significant industry support. These allowed students to finish school and to start a trade.

Labor supports this bill to tidy up legislative instruments which are obsolete, but laments this government's poor record on providing, encouraging and supporting important trades training.