Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is not a matter of having good reforms and doing what one can to make the PBS a better system. I know that there are people who are not getting their scripts because they have been cut back by this government.

As I said, there is a skills shortage crisis. Whether it is with builders, electricians, plumbers, doctors, teachers, nurses, dentists or chefs, to name a few—all those skills are scarce in Australia. Yet this government have boasted that they have set up some additional colleges around the states. That was about a year ago. This is to solve all the shortages that we have. But where are they? And where are the new tradespeople? I think we are looking at four colleges struggling to come up at the moment. I understand that there might be one in Queensland, which has one student. And there are others that have students where they come from and that has given a boost to the numbers. But there are still very small numbers coming out of the four that are up. I think it will be 2010, and probably more like 2015, before we have anybody really coming out of these colleges.

Yet we have a perfectly good TAFE system in the state system. Some immediate funds could have gone into those establishments. We could have had courses going and we could have had students coming out in 2008-09. These colleges were mooted for political reasons—

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