Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, as you know only too well, education is the No. 1 issue that parents raise when we talk to them in our electorates or when visiting communities elsewhere in Australia. They want a good education for their children. Whether it is at a primary school or a high school; whether it relates to getting an apprenticeship, getting into TAFE or going to university—whatever it is, parents want to know that their children will have the best opportunities to get a good education. Families across middle Australia tell me this and I have no doubt they also tell it to all the members of the Howard government. They must do so, because I am told about it by every single parent I talk to.

We know that the Treasurer and Acting Prime Minister has a new-found delight in getting out and about in different parts of Australia, dressing up in orange suits and burning down boats. When he gets around to these, for him, usual places, parents also must be telling him just how important education is to Australian families. But one thing seems to be absolutely clear: he has not been listening to them at all. The Treasurer’s speech on budget night demonstrates that fact. Not once in his whole 30-minute speech did he use the word ‘education’. This budget does absolutely nothing to invest in the skills of our nation, either now or in the future. It is the gaping hole in this year’s budget. In particular, the budget has failed young people by refusing to invest in the skills that they need and our country needs to build our future prosperity.

We know that the skills crisis, which is the direct result of mismanagement by this government, is putting a serious handbrake on the Australian economy by applying upward pressure to interest rates. Once again, in this budget, the Treasurer has refused to make the investment needed in our skills at present and into the future to solve the skills crisis. This budget spent about $11 billion of new money in this year alone—$11 billion of new money—but it spent only $40 million on apprenticeships. It really shows just how extraordinarily out of touch this Treasurer is. It certainly demonstrates how completely out of fresh ideas the government is when it comes to addressing the nation’s skills crisis.

At the end of the Treasurer’s budget speech this year there was a little section on skills, where he talked about and highlighted $5 billion being allocated for the national training agreement. There is only one problem: that $5 billion is the exact same $5 billion he talked about in last year’s budget. There has been no change from last year to this year, even though we have this raging skills crisis and business is crying out for the government to do something about it. In fact, when you look at the details in this year’s budget, you see that spending on vocational education and training has declined as a percentage of government budget expenditure. It will go from 0.75 per cent this year to 0.73 per cent next year—and the decline will continue, to 0.67 per cent in 2009-10.

You have to say that this budget is a serious lost opportunity, with the government deciding now that, instead of investing in the young people of Australia, it will continue to rapidly increase the number of foreign workers entering this country. In addition, most disgracefully, it will allow there to be a new foreign apprenticeship visa rather than increase the opportunities for young Australians to get apprenticeships in the areas where they are so desperately wanted.

Let us look at the detail of what else this budget did, particularly in the skills and training area. There was no new money for TAFE. Even though we have a raging skills crisis and a great many young people being turned away from TAFE, there is no extra money for TAFE. The government actually cut $13.7 million from a program that encourages apprenticeships in rural and regional Australia. This is an incentive program to encourage rural and regional employers to take on apprentices. What did this government do? It cut the funding to that program.

The government actually abolished a program aimed at getting more women into the non-traditional trades, whether it was the construction, automotive engineering or mining trades—you name it. In most of these trades, there are still very few women engaged in apprenticeships. But this government in this budget abolished a program that provided incentives to employers to take on women in the non-traditional trades—that is, non-traditional for women. That was a cut of $38.5 million.

The government also abolished a $23.2 million program that gave low-income older workers IT skills. These were older workers who wanted to improve their skills. They did not have the computer skills that young people had. These older workers wanted to make sure that they had the skills necessary to help them get a promotion or a better-paid job. But the government, in this budget, decided to cut this program that gave a little help to older people to improve their IT skills.

Probably the most significant indicator of the incompetence of this government has been the dramatic underspending on its new Australian technical colleges. It spent $40 million less than promised in 2005-06 and 2006-07. Of course, the big losers are going to be those young Australians who might have had the opportunity to get a school based apprenticeship in one of these new technical colleges. When we saw the figures on budget night, we could see why so few of these technical colleges have gotten off the ground. So little money has been spent, and we now know that at one college, in Gladstone, only one student is enrolled. There is only one student at the new technical college in Gladstone, who is enrolled to do an apprenticeship as an electrician. Right across Australia four of these new technical colleges have been established—four for the whole nation, a nation that is in the middle of this terrible skills crisis—and the minister says there are fewer than 300 students enrolled in these colleges across Australia. We know that one of them, at Port Macquarie, has almost 200 students. This is a school that existed before these new technical colleges came into being. You can hardly say that the government has had a raging success with what the Prime Minister certainly saw as the centrepiece of his election commitment to address the skills shortage.

We have got the Australian Industry Group saying that by 2010 Australia will need to 100,000 extra skilled tradespeople, and here we are in 2006—it takes four years to train an apprentice—and we have got, at most, 300 students in these technical colleges. If they all actually finish, the government might produce 300 extra traditional trade apprentices by 2010 as a result of establishing these new technical colleges. That is 300 extra if it is lucky—it probably will not be that many—and the Australian Industry Group says we need 100,000 extra. It is extraordinarily incompetent of the government. It has such a major economic problem on its plate and it is incapable of delivering the extra apprentices that the country needs, and needs right now.

There is one initiative that we do welcome in the budget—that is, the decision to allocate $10.6 million to extend new apprenticeship incentives to up the qualifications framework to diploma and advanced diplomas students. This proposal was first put forward by the Leader of the Opposition in his skills blueprint in September last year. I am glad to see the government picking up one of our ideas—I think that it will help—but I will go through a number of other ideas that Labor has put forward. I encourage the government to pick some of them up, because we have such a serious crisis that needs addressing.

There was some criticism by the Australian Industry Group of the budget. They said:

… it is disappointing that more progress has not been made on the big nation-building goals of skills and innovation…

… investments in skills, innovation and infrastructure are required to build the competitiveness of Australian business and to assist in rebalancing the economy as the current minerals boom begins to fade.

Of course, they are very disappointed as a result of there being no extra investment in this budget. We have had the Chief Executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mr Peter Hendy, saying that the skills shortage was the ‘the No. 1 complaint’ of investors, and yet he too has been ignored. We on this side of the parliament all know that our economic prosperity will not continue without investment in skills. We have had the Reserve Bank just this month saying that the shortage of skilled workers is one of the significant capacity constraints in our economy, and it is putting upward pressure on inflation and on interest rates.

We have had the OECD tell us that Australia is the only developed country that has reduced public investment in universities and TAFEs since 1995. The average increase across the OECD was 38 per cent, but Australia was the only country to go backwards. So while our competitors are investing in people, Australia is falling further behind under this government. The government seems to think that we should not worry about where our future economic growth is coming from—that it is coming from our mineral boom. We know, on this side of parliament, that we cannot afford to take that approach. We are in danger of being leapfrogged by China and India, who are seriously investing in their education and vocational training systems. We could look to the example of Norway, a country like Australia, which experienced a massive economic boom from the oil and gas fields in the North Sea. But they realised that they could not rest on their laurels. They made huge investments in innovation, in education, in training, and that is exactly what Australia must do, because our national prosperity depends on it.

As I have said, Labor has put forward a number of proposals in this area, which the government should adopt, because we want to be part of the solution to address this major skills crisis. Labor has announced that we will make sure that no traditional trade apprentice will face any up-front TAFE fees. We will put $800 into a skills account for every single traditional trade apprentice starting their apprenticeship. We will also make available the trade completion bonus of $2,000 to help encourage apprentices to complete their apprenticeships. At the moment, 40 per cent of traditional trade apprentices drop out of their apprenticeships. These two measures alone would add an extra 13,000 qualified tradespeople to those available to business each and every year. Why won’t the government act in these practical ways to address these very serious problems?

In his speech in reply to the budget, the Leader of the Opposition announced that we would extend these skills accounts to child-care trainees, with a contribution of $1,200 a year for up to two years to get rid of up-front TAFE fees for those studying towards a child-care diploma—another initiative from Labor to address the serious shortage of child-care workers. We have also put forward a number of proposals for our schools that could help address the skills crisis. We will double the number of school based trade apprenticeships, making sure that schools get increased federal funding. We want to see a national network of trades schools and science and technology schools and a range of other possibilities to ensure that young people can start a trade while they are still at school. I am pleased to see that this initiative proposed by federal Labor has been picked up in South Australia and, most recently, in New South Wales. We will also invest in trade facilities in our schools to make sure we have the most up-to-date trade workshops rather than the dusty, Dickensian workshops that, unfortunately, exist in many of our schools.

Labor have proposed what we call a ‘trades taster’ program for year 9 and 10 students to try out different trades before they decide which apprenticeship to apply for. These are real policy solutions to address our skills shortage, none of which have been picked up by the federal government, though I am pleased to see that a number of them are being adopted by some of our state colleagues.

The way the government has addressed some of the problems in our schools has been quite extraordinary. The new minister is fairly keen on putting out media releases on all sorts of alleged problems that she thinks exist in our school system. She has been making threats to state ministers by suggesting she might withhold funding, but then you look at what the government is doing in our schools to address some of the problems that she has highlighted—around curriculum standards, reporting, teaching of reading, teacher education standards, teaching of mathematics, science education, music education and national consistency in curriculum, particularly for year 12 credentials. She has been out there talking about each and every one of these issues, but we have not seen any initiative in this year’s budget to address many of the issues, and, of course, some of them are very serious indeed.

I want to highlight one of these issues. About six months ago the literacy inquiry report by Dr Ken Rowe was handed to the government. It was a very good report with sensible recommendations. Six months ago that was given to the government; six months ago the government could have put some serious effort into addressing the literacy and reading concerns that exist in our schools and that parents are certainly very worried about. Twenty recommendations were made as a result of this important inquiry. There was absolute silence from this minister. There is nothing in this budget to address the concerns that Ken Rowe highlighted in his literacy inquiry.

Surprisingly, there was a bit of extra money in the budget to extend the tutorial voucher program, which you would have to say has been discredited. I hope the minister takes the advice of the evaluation in the report:

There is a clear link between the take-up rate and the level of involvement of State and Territory education authorities.

It would be so much more sensible for the minister to cooperate with the states and territories to work with our schools and teachers, especially with Indigenous students in communities to make sure that this extra funding for tutorial literacy assistance actually gets to where it is needed. The 12 and 18 per cent take-up rates of the last effort show that the way they did it before, through private brokers, really did not work.

I want to finish with a couple of comments about what this government is doing to university students. Yet again there was a most extraordinary initiative by the government, this time to load up our university students with more and more debt. In this budget the government has decided to increase the limit of FEE-HELP so that students in medicine, veterinary science and dentistry degrees can now borrow up to $100,000. For the other full-fee degrees students will be able to borrow up to $80,000.

We know that this government is hell-bent on Americanising our education system. If ever you wanted a good indication of where they are doing that, it is in higher education. There are now more than 60 degrees that cost more than $100,000, even though the Prime Minister actually said to the Australian people that the government would not be introducing an American style higher education system. He said: ‘There will be no $100,000 degrees.’ Well, Prime Minister, at the last count there were 60 of those degrees. Now that this loan has been extended, I have no doubt that even more degrees will cost $100,000 or more.

That is the attitude of the government when it comes to higher education—just make students pay more and more; have more and more students needing FEE-HELP to pay their university loans. It is all about loading our students up with more and more debt. I say to the person who wants to be the next Prime Minister: when you cannot even once mention the word ‘education’ in your budget, it demonstrates how completely out of touch you are. (Time expired)

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