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

The Australian technical colleges are the latest example of the serious incompetence of the Howard government. There has been gross inaction in the face of Australia’s skills crisis—inaction that for 10 long years has seen this government refuse to invest in Australia’s skills. Neglecting Australia’s skills development in an era of unprecedented prosperity is an act of incompetence, foolishness and negligence, and it is now coming back to hurt Australian families and to hurt them very hard. I move the second reading amendment to the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House condemns the Government for:

(1)

creating a skills crisis during their ten long years in office;

(2)

its continued failure to provide the necessary opportunities for Australians to get the training they need to get a decent job and meet the skills needs of the economy;

(3)

reducing the overall percentage of the Federal Budget spent on vocational education and training, and allowing this percentage of spending to further decline over the forward estimate period;

(4)

its  incompetent handling of the Australian Technical Colleges initiative as evidenced by only four out of twenty five colleges being open for business, enrolling fewer than 300 students,

(5)

failing to be open and accountable about the operations of the Australian Technical Colleges, including details of extra student enrolments, funding levels for the individual colleges, course structures and programs.

(6)

denying local communities their promised Australian Technical College because of their ideological industrial relations requirements; and

(7)

failing to provide enough extra skills training so that Australia can meet the expected shortfall of 100,000 skilled workers by 2010”.

The latest skills vacancy index produced by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations shows that skilled vacancies have continued to rise. Vacancies in the trades rose by 2.9 per cent in the month of May. Vacancies in electrical and electronics trades rose by 3.3 per cent; construction, 2.1 per cent; automotive, 2.9 per cent; chefs, 3.9 per cent; and hairdressing, 6.3 per cent. Investing in trades and technical education is critical. For this reason Labor welcomed the additional $350 million of investment for these Australian technical colleges. It is, you would have to say, a welcome change from 10 long years of this government ignoring the trades.

We supported the principal technical college bill in the parliament last year and we will today support this amendment bill, which will attempt to get the money spent more quickly. The bill brings forward funding for the proposed 25 Australian technical colleges from 2008-09 into 2006-07. The total level of funding remains the same. Establishing 25 Australian technical colleges is the Howard government’s only answer to this raging skills crisis.

Let us just go through whether or not this aim is going to be achieved. Unfortunately, to date, the government has been very reluctant to provide much detail on progress. Of course, the public has a right to know—it is public money. I want to use this opportunity today to find out whether or not we can actually get some information out of this minister. Hopefully, when the Minister for Vocational and Technical Education comes into the chamber, he might provide some real details about where these colleges are up to. Because one thing is for sure: it is all taking too long. We have a minister in this case who seems to be extremely incompetent. He is unable to get these colleges up and running. We seem to have to wait longer and longer to see these colleges produce their first qualified tradesperson. Of course, it will not be until then that we are going to have any sort of dent in the massive skills shortages facing the Australian economy.

If we go back to the last election campaign, people will remember the Prime Minister saying, ‘The technical colleges are the centrepiece of our drive to tackle skills shortages and to revolutionise vocational education and training throughout Australia.’ If that is a revolution, it is a very tiny movement. It is more like a little shift of a wheel. The reality of the technical colleges comes nowhere near matching this flowery rhetoric.

Let us have a look at what the government have been able to do to progress what they call their ‘centrepiece policy’. Twenty months after they were announced, there are supposed to be 25 colleges—that is how many were promised. Now, right at this moment, there are only four that are open for business. Each of the 25 colleges was supposed to have 300 students enrolled in years 11 and 12. That meant the promise was that there were going to be 7,500 students enrolled and working towards their trade in a school based new apprenticeship. How many students are there? Gladstone technical college in Queensland has one student enrolled and there are fewer than 300 students enrolled in the other colleges on the Gold Coast, in eastern Melbourne and Port Macquarie. There are 300 students in four colleges rather than 300 students in each college. Of course, there is no word on exactly how many of these students are really new to vocational education and training. Who is learning a trade for the first time in a new technical college rather than just continuing their vocational studies at a school with a new name?

When these incredibly low enrolment figures were put to the government in this chamber last month, the Deputy Prime Minister cited Port Macquarie’s technical college—in his own electorate no less—as an exemplar of the government’s policy success. What he failed to mention was that the success in trade and vocational training at St Joseph’s College in Port Macquarie has not been achieved because of the federal government. In fact, St Joseph’s had been a success long before the Prime Minister announced the Australian technical colleges during the last election. It can be put no more simply than in the words of the head of that school who said to a newspaper recently:

The technical college model is essentially what we have been doing since 1979.

So much for a revolution. Of the 220 students enrolled at the Australian technical college in Port Macquarie, located primarily at St Joseph’s VOCOL, about 185 were enrolled at St Joseph’s vocational college in Port Macquarie last year. It is the case that this extra funding will bring new facilities, but it seems to be true that very few additional students are preparing for a trade as a result of the technical college being established to meet the serious skills shortages we have.

If more than two-thirds of the enrolments in the four Australian technical colleges are located at Port Macquarie, which is not much more than building on the success of the local school, the credit the government is claiming really should go to the hard-working staff of St Joseph’s. I ask the minister to tell the parliament during his summing up how many extra students are studying vocational education because of his technical colleges. By our reckoning, if you take account of the 185 vocational students at St Joseph’s last year, there would actually be fewer than 100 extra students learning a trade as a result of these technical colleges.

The opposition has been asking the government detailed questions on how the technical colleges are operating and we have been doing that for over a year here in the House through questions with and without notice and during Senate estimates hearings. Frankly, all we get from the government is stony silence. We cannot find out the detail. We cannot find out how much funding each college is receiving or what qualifications the students will graduate with. We cannot find out when the other 21 colleges will open their doors. Hopefully the minister will give us this information.

All the answers we get from the department have been based on expectations, targets, and hope. We need much more than this minister’s blind faith, let alone his dumb luck, to train our future workforce. What we really need to see from this minister and from the government is the sleeves rolled up and these colleges opened. Of course, the Australian people and the parliament should be told the true story. Where are these colleges really up to?

Even though it has been impossible for us to find out all the detail of student numbers, we have been able to find out fee levels. The government does seem to know what fees will be charged. The college fees so far range from $500 in eastern Melbourne to $2,000 on the Gold Coast. At St Joseph’s in Port Macquarie, we can see that the Australian technical college concept works best when it is building on the success of local schools. Let us contrast Port Macquarie with the situation in Lismore-Ballina. This contrast is a damning indictment of how the government lets extreme ideology get in the way of positive outcomes for local students.

Lismore-Ballina was promised a technical college by the Prime Minister back in September 2004. The locals, the schools, the TAFE and local businesses got together and came up with good local ideas, building on their own expertise and knowledge. In May 2005, they put proposals to Canberra. Here we are a whole year later and the people in Lismore and Ballina are still waiting for an announcement about who will run their college—if they get one at all. Minister Hardgrave has rejected two proposals from local groups and the only word from him has been a threat to take their promised college away unless there is a ‘clear indication’ of local support. I would have thought that two proposals from the local community was a pretty clear indication of what they wanted.

The Northern Rivers area of New South Wales is desperate for trade training. They have a massive shortage of carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers and electricians. It is also the case that teenage unemployment in the area is at 32 per cent. One of the rejected proposals was from a local consortium which included the local high school and TAFE. Ballina High School won the 2004 national VET in Schools Excellence Award and the North Coast Institute of TAFE won the 2004 national Large Training Provider of the Year Award, yet their proposal to run an Australian technical college was rejected by the Howard government. Thankfully, the New South Wales government has stepped into the breach and announced in their recent state budget that Ballina High would be funded under that state’s new trade schools program. So at least we will see additional trade training happening in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales because of the initiative of the New South Wales government.

I had the pleasure of visiting Ballina High recently and met with the students and staff. They have outstanding students who are keen to get trade training and very dedicated staff who certainly know how to make vocational education and training work in our schools. They really are a great example of what we need—if only the federal minister would put ideology aside and consider working with them. The Deputy Principal of Ballina High told the Northern Star newspaper when I was up there, ‘We are still here, if the government would reconsider.’ They were rejected because they did not want to be tied to the Howard government’s extreme industrial relations requirements. This government is insisting on mixing up IR conditions with the delivery of training. At the government’s insistence, all staff employed at an Australian technical college must be offered an individual contract. If a local school or TAFE does not want to implement the government’s extreme industrial relations agenda then it gets cut off from the technical college program.

I just want to say to the government: extreme industrial relations agendas have no constructive link to training our future tradespeople. The government should drop this condition and get on with the job of opening more colleges because so far we only have four open. A whole year after tenders closed, we only have 12 funding agreements out of the 22 that were announced by the minister. Three regions have had no announcement on the preferred bidder, let alone whether or not a college might open. We do not even know whether they will open at all. Minister Hardgrave let the cat out of the bag not so long ago, threatening to take the promised colleges away from the local communities of not only Lismore and Ballina but also Dubbo and Queanbeyan. In Dubbo we know that two proposals were submitted—one from the New South Wales state education department and another from a private consortium—but we hear the federal government is out brokering for alternatives in the region. What is wrong with either of the proposals? Why have they been rejected? Will either of them go ahead?

In Queanbeyan, again, two proposals were received and, again, we had the involvement of the New South Wales state education department as a sticking point. The process in Queanbeyan has been criticised by the ACT Chamber of Commerce and Industry because the federal government was not willing to work constructively with industry based in Canberra who, of course, have links to the surrounding region. As local residents know, it is very easy to move between the ACT and Queanbeyan, so why can’t the federal government make a technical college work in this area? What really needs to happen is for Minister Hardgrave to sit down and work constructively with his state counterparts. That is his job; he needs to get on with it. The minister should come in here and tell the parliament how many proposals in these three regions were rejected because they would not offer individual contracts to their staff. How many technical colleges have been held up because of the Howard government’s extreme industrial relations agenda?

The college promised in Darwin is also under threat after Minister Hardgrave threatened to withdraw funding from the consortium awarded the right to operate the college. There is example after example of these colleges unravelling. This minister has not been able to deliver more than empty rhetoric and, unfortunately, still only vague promises. The economy needs the colleges; our young people need the colleges. We need to make sure more opportunities are there for young people to start a trade.

This bill brings forward funding into the current and next calendar year from 2008 and 2009. That is a reallocation of $62 million for 2006 and $26 million for 2007 on top of what they already had. Let us have a look at how much they have been able to spend; you have to worry about whether they are going to be able to deliver. As of the end of May this year, $185 million had been committed to the Australian technical colleges, but only $18 million had been spent. So there was $185 million committed but they have only managed to get $18 million out there on the ground. A total budget exists of $343 million over four years. The government are dramatically underspending on these colleges. Comparing the last two budget projections, it is $40 million less than promised in the financial years 2005-06 and 2006-07.

There can be no clearer indication that policy implementation is being bungled when you have so little of the money being spent. It is no wonder the government is refusing to reveal funding details for each of the colleges—it is just too embarrassed by very poor figures. This money needs to be spent to address our national skills crisis. Australian businesses need more welders, diesel mechanics and boilermakers, and we know that Australian families cannot get carpenters, plumbers or electricians when they need to get their homes built or renovated.

With fewer than 300 students enrolled in these colleges, businesses and families are going to be waiting a very long time before they reap any benefit from the Prime Minister’s promises. We know that training a skilled worker does not happen overnight. It requires investment over a considerable period of time. There is no quick fix for properly training our young Australians. Technical colleges will take up to four years before they produce their first qualified tradesperson. So the four colleges now up and running will, at best, produce fewer than 300 extra qualified tradespeople by 2010. The Australian Industry Group says we will need an extra 100,000 skilled workers by then.

There have been so many warnings given to the government. The Reserve Bank has repeatedly identified the shortage of skilled workers as one of the significant capacity constraints in our economy, putting upward pressure on inflation and interest rates. We have the OECD highlighting again and again that skill shortages are a critical hindrance to future economic growth. Most recently, Peter Hendy from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that skill shortages were the No. 1 complaint of investors. All of these business groups are coming out and complaining about the government’s efforts in this regard. The Australian Industry Group’s Heather Ridout said just after the budget:

… 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.

We on this side of the parliament know that Australia’s economic prosperity will not continue without investment in skills. We must re-invest in our skills base through strong education and training of our young people.

The Howard government’s record in this area is nothing short of a disgrace. Under this government, Australia is the only developed country in the world to reduce public investment in TAFEs and universities. Public investment in our universities and TAFEs has fallen eight per cent since 1995; the OECD average is a 38 per cent increase. We must have a more systematic approach to promoting trades, science and technology education than the Howard government’s 25 technical colleges. Unlike the Howard government, Labor would work with the states and territories to deliver major changes to secondary schooling for the benefit of young Australians.

Last September Kim Beazley put out Labor’s skills blueprint. I will touch very briefly on the initiatives that a Labor government would put in place. We would:

offer young people better choices by teaching trades, technology and science in first-class facilities and rid our schools of dusty and Dickensian workshops.

…     …         …

Establish a Trades in Schools scheme to double the number of school based apprenticeships in areas of skill shortage and provide extra funding per place;

We intend to provide specialist schools for the senior years of schooling in trades, in technology and in science. We would also:

Establish a Trades Taster Program so year 9 and 10 students can experience a range of trade options, which could also lead to pre-apprenticeship programs.

Labor has announced that we would overhaul the failed New Apprenticeships scheme. Labor has had all of these initiatives out there—all of these policies that would make a difference.

Unfortunately, by contrast, we have a government that is incapable of implementing the one policy it has. Currently 40 per cent of people who start a new apprenticeship do not complete their training. Imagine if we could get those young people to complete their training. Labor’s priority is to turn that around by offering a $2,000 trade completion bonus so that we give young people an incentive to finish their trade. We have also said we would pay the TAFE fees of traditional trade apprentices and child-care trainees to encourage them into the trades and into child-care work. Labor’s priority is all about training Australians first and training them now, not, by contrast, doing what this government is doing: going for the quick-fix approach and bringing them in from overseas.

The progress of these new Australian technical colleges has raised many questions, which the minister has so far left unanswered. Once again, I call on him to come into the chamber and come clean on how these colleges are really going.

See this speech in context