Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Minister representing the Prime Minister, I table a statement on Skills for the Future.

Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This announcement by the Prime Minister today about funding for vocational education and training comes after 10 years of the Howard government starving the vocational education and training sector in Australia of funds it needed in order to ensure that young people and others in Australia could access the training, skills and experience that they needed in order to get employment in these areas. We have seen, as a result of this government failure to invest in our vocational education and training sector and in the TAFE sector in particular, that the government has created for itself, by its own mismanagement of funding in this arena, the skills shortage that we now face.

So we see in this announcement from the Prime Minister today, and in the response from the government, an acknowledgement in the lead-up to an election that they have created the skills shortage problem that we face right now and that there is a need for them to address it. We see a small amount of money being allocated. People might look at the amount—it is $837 million—and say, ‘How could you say that’s a small amount?’ It is $837 million over four years, and it is not as much money as this government have taken out of the vocational education and training sector since they came into government.

In 1997 this government changed the funding formula by which it funds TAFE around this country. There was no longer indexation to the funding provided, and there was also no growth in funding when you had a growth in students. The vocational education and training sector, the TAFE sector in particular, has been starved of all this funding because it has had no growth funding and no indexation funding. This amount of money, this $837 million over four years, goes nowhere near addressing the shortfall in the funding cuts that this government has imposed on vocational education and training and on the TAFE sector in particular in Australia.

The other feature that we see in this proposal being put forward by the government is that its response is to set up a system of vouchers that individuals get whereby they can spend $3,000 getting skills training at any institution that they choose. It is not $3,000 that can be invested into the public sector through our TAFE systems; it is $3,000 that they can choose to spend on a private provider. This is what we have seen during 10 years of the Howard government. When it came into government in 1996, there was a strong and robust TAFE system, a public system for vocational education and training in this country. There were many suggestions about how that could have been improved but, compared with what we have got now, it was a reasonably well-funded and well-resourced public institution that was able to provide benefit to students, to business, to the whole of the Australian community and to our economy.

Over 10 years the government have substantially reduced the funding to this sector at the same time as they have introduced a whole range of new players into the vocational education and training sector—private providers that do not have the same regulation or requirements from the federal government to ensure that they produce the same quality teaching and learning environments where people can access the skills and the training that they need to go on and work in our workforce. So we have seen this proliferation of small registered training organisations and private providers at the same time as we have seen funding from the government taken away from our very strong and world-renowned system of vocational education and training through our TAFE systems. Now with the government’s proposal—having starved TAFE of funding for 10 years and created a skills shortage—we see, in the lead-up to an election, the government promising a small amount of money which individuals can then choose to invest in the government’s private providers that they have supported and built up at the same time as they have reduced the funding for the public sector.

New South Wales TAFE had some research done by Allen Consulting Group in August this year, in which they looked at the value of the TAFE sector to the economy. This was specific to New South Wales. They found that over the next 20 years TAFE New South Wales’s contribution to the New South Wales economy would be worth $196 billion. I will say that again: $196 billion is the contribution, just in New South Wales, of the TAFE sector to our economy. In that report there was a calculation that every dollar that was invested now in TAFE New South Wales would generate benefits worth $6.40 in today’s dollar terms. That is a 640 per cent return on government investment. That is the kind of investment return that the government could have and should have by investing public funds into our public TAFE system so that people have access to vocational education and training in this country.

We have seen the approach of this government has been to withdraw the funding available from vocational education and training to such an extent that this year, for the first time, defence has overtaken education as the third biggest area of federal expenditure. The government’s decision to spend $2 billion to buy four enormous C17 transport planes alone will cost more than its allocation to vocational education and training for the next financial year. It is a decision the government has made to prioritise defence above education, and, in particular, vocational education and training.

The extent of the Howard government’s cuts is revealed by the latest figures from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research. They show that the Commonwealth’s real funding per vocational education and training student hour has been cut by 24 per cent from 1997 to 2004. Given these figures—a 24 per cent cut in spending on vocational and education training between 1997 and 2004—it is unsurprising that we have the skills shortage that we face now in this country. And this announcement by the government, the $837 million over four years, will go nowhere near addressing these cuts that we have seen over the last 10 years.

At the WorldSkills Leaders Forum in Melbourne in May this year, former Prime Minister Bob Hawke was talking about the OECD statistics in this area. He said:

This federal government has decreased spending on tertiary education by 8%, including vocational education and training, over the last decade, when all other OECD countries have increased such spending, on average by 38%—

He went on to say that this is a figure that this country should be ashamed of, especially now that a recent international survey of businesses found that the skills shortage crisis in Australia was second worst only to Botswana’s. The federal government’s funding neglect of vocational education and training has been highlighted not only by the OECD but also by the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Industry Group.

The federal government like to respond to these comments by talking about their investment in the new apprenticeships centres. Let me tell you about the situation in New South Wales, where the federal Minister for Vocational and Technical Education decided to cancel the Department of Education and Training’s new apprentice centre contract from 30 June this year. He decided to cancel this contract to the public TAFE sector in New South Wales, despite the federal government’s own assessment that gave the New South Wales training scheme a 98 per cent quality service rating and a 93 per cent satisfaction rating amongst apprentices and employers that had used its services.

It is probably the best training support service in Australia, and in New South Wales it assists more than 100,000 apprentices and trainees as well as 37,000 employers. Its consumer base is about 44 per cent of the New South Wales market. And, of the now 30 approved new providers that the federal government has listed in New South Wales, not one of them is a public provider. Many individual employers and group trainers in New South Wales have written to federal government MPs seeking a reversal of this decision. We have seen the federal government take funding away from vocational education and training and create a skills shortage, and now they are seeking to purport that this announcement will make a difference. (Time expired)

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will be brief, because no doubt this matter will be debated again subsequently in this chamber. But I want to make some brief comments about the Prime Minister’s announcement today. It is extraordinary, after 10 years of the Howard government and a failure to train Australians—a record which includes turning away 300,000 young Australians from TAFEs—that the government finally, when it is under a bit of political pressure, is doing something to address the skills crisis over which it is has presided and which in fact it has directly contributed to through its failure to train young Australians.

It is extraordinary that the Prime Minister comes now to the parliament and says, ‘We’ve got a great plan,’ simply because he is under political pressure because the community, business and the parliament—through the opposition and other parties—have been saying for some time: ‘Our country needs more skilled workers; our country needs investment in training and education. That is the way of the future, not the low-wage, low-skill future that is implicit in the Work Choices legislation.’ It is not until the government is under a bit of political pressure that it actually chooses to do something. It did not choose to do anything in the budget this year. We had a budget just a few months ago. Did we see investment in education and training in that budget? No. It happens only when the Prime Minister believes he is actually under a bit of political pressure, as he should be because of the economically irresponsible failure to invest in education and training.

I want to make one point—and, as I said, this will no doubt be the subject of further debate at a later stage—about who misses out in Skills for the Future. There is nothing in this package for young unemployed Australians below the age of 25. We all know—all the evidence shows—what investment in young people, early school leavers who do not go on to post-school education, can return. And what is the Prime Minister giving to those young people? He is essentially saying under this package, ‘If you’re an early school leaver, we want you to hang around for nine years, between the ages of 16 and 25, before we give you access to the centrepiece of this package, which is the work skills vouchers.’

I want to make the point also that today saw the release of the unemployment figures and, despite the good headline rates, the figures demonstrate that, despite economic growth, we have one in five Australian teenagers unemployed. One in five Australian teenagers remain unemployed. On the same day, the Prime Minister announces this great skills package which does nothing for Australians under 25. Not one dollar of the Skills for the Future package goes to attracting Australian kids under 25 to get into traditional trade apprenticeships.

The fact is that the government has presided over a skills crisis. The government has been asleep at the wheel when it comes to education and training over the last 10 years. Now, because it is under a bit of political pressure, it is investing some money in education and training. There is nothing in the Prime Minister’s package for young Australians at a time when one in five Australians teenagers who are looking for work remain unemployed. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.