Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the  Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006 and support the amendment moved by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. But I must also note that the previous speaker, the member for Moncrieff, is obviously wearing his white shoes today. The legislation before us seeks to bring forward funding for the proposed 25 Australian technical colleges from 2008-09 into 2006-07. While the total funding amount from 2006 to 2009 remains the same, some $88 million is being bought forward.

Labor does not oppose the move to bring this funding forward—heaven knows the Australian technical colleges scheme needs it after the way the Howard government has bungled its implementation. What we do oppose is the systematic way in which this government has underinvested in the skills of this nation’s people over the past 10 long years. Even with bringing forward this funding, these Australian technical colleges will not produce their first qualified tradesperson until 2010. That is 3½ years away. That seems a funny way to address what everybody else in the country is calling a massive, immediate, shortage of skilled workers. Indeed, the skills crisis has got so out of control under the Howard government that by 2010, according to the Australian Industry Group, this nation will need an extra 100,000 skilled workers. The Howard government’s Australian technical colleges will have produced just 300 skilled workers by that time. What a pathetic outcome for the $350 million the government is spending on this.

Only four Australian technical colleges are currently operating, despite their being one of the centrepieces of the Howard government’s election campaign back in 2004. Indeed, looking at the locations of the technical colleges does give a clue as to why that might be. Nineteen out of the 25 proposed colleges are located in Liberal or National Party seats, many of which are marginal. Eighteen months after the election, only four of these colleges are up and running. And with recent reports suggesting that four are in danger of being scrapped altogether, it is clear that skilling our workforce is not the high priority that the Howard government pretends that it is. Apparently, it is interested in the skills crisis only around election time when it can pork-barrel with proposals to build these new colleges in its marginal seats.

The government cannot say it has not been warned about the skills crisis. The Reserve Bank of Australia’s latest statement on monetary policy clearly stated that the national skills crisis is holding back our economy. The RBA said:

... that lack of suitable labour was a bigger constraint on—

business—

... activities than more traditional concerns about the adequacy of demand or sales.

Most recently, an international survey found that half of Australian businesses felt constrained by a lack of skilled staff. Comparing us to other nations, it found that only Botswana had a bigger skills crisis. And the government also has its own report into skills shortages and the ageing population, the Workforce Tomorrow report. This report deals with Australia’s ageing population and its projected shortfall of skilled workers. Unfortunately, since its release in November last year, the government has done nothing but use Workforce Tomorrow as a justification for its Work Choices package. That is a shame because the report actually raises serious questions—but the government has got the wrong answer. The response by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Mr Andrews, to this report, that that is why we need Work Choices, would be laughable if it were not so serious for the workers of this country. How driving down wages and conditions, doing away with penalty rates, removing protection from unfair dismissal and all but abolishing collective bargaining creates a skilled workforce is anyone’s guess. In fact, it defies logic. What it actually creates is a new class of working poor, vulnerable to exploitation and dependent on the goodwill of the boss, not the law of the land, to maintain their dignity as workers.

Unfortunately, the Howard government has no plan for sustaining this prosperity in the future. It has wasted its opportunity to do something in this latest budget. It has wasted the past 18 months when it should have been getting these technical colleges up and running. It has wasted the past 10 years when the looming skills crisis was brewing on its watch. Australia is the only developed country which has actually reduced public investment in TAFEs and universities. Public investment in Australia’s universities and TAFEs has fallen eight per cent since 1995. The OECD average is an embarrassing 38 per cent increase, yet all this government can manage, when it comes to investing in knowledge, is a measly eight per cent decline.

On budget night we saw yet another wasted opportunity, with all serious commentators and economists crying out for the Treasurer, Peter Costello, to use his $17 billion surplus to invest in the skills of our workforce—but the Treasurer did nothing. So the budget was all about the Howard government giving up on increasing productivity by not acting on this skills crisis. It was the Howard government saying that importing 270,000 skilled workers from overseas is an adequate response to that crisis. It was the Howard government saying that technical colleges, with their paltry 300 graduates in 2010, is an adequate response to the skills crisis.

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