Ken Ticehurst (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today, Australian industry faces a skills shortage in a number of traditional nation-building trades. If we fail to meet this issue head-on, our economy will suffer. Therefore it is imperative that we encourage more young people to continue with vocational and technical education. At the outset, I would like to remind the House that, during 13 years of Labor government, Labor’s answer to skills shortages was to place young Australians on the dole queue and provide Australia with ‘the recession we had to have’ and record interest rates which resulted in record bankruptcies and high inflation. We had house mortgage interest rates of 17 per cent and company overdrafts of 23 per cent. In direct contrast, this Australian government has provided an environment of strong economic growth, record low unemployment, low interest rates and low inflation.

Through the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006, the government is encouraging young Australians into trades and to continue on to trade based self-employment or to open their own small businesses. That is what the Australian government is all about. When Labor was in office, no strategies were in place to provide opportunities for trade training or vocational education. In fact, the opposite was true. It was as though academic qualifications were the only thing a young person should have to face the world. The coalition government thinks differently. We are committed to building a nation in which a high-quality technical education is as valued as a university qualification.

Some 70 per cent of young people do not go directly from school to university and many choose to undertake vocational and technical education and apprenticeships. The Australian government values and respects these choices. The government is determined to ensure that the choice to enter a trade is valued by a young person’s peers and the broader community. The government is achieving this by working to turn around cultural attitudes, especially among young people, in relation to the traditional trades. Students will graduate from Australian technical colleges with a head start in their working lives. Technical colleges are an important part of the Howard government’s approach to meeting our nation-building skills needs; they are an investment in the longer term.

The main purpose of the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill is to allow the movement of moneys for the establishment of ATCs. The total funds of $343.6 million appropriated to fund agreements are in place with 13 consortia, and this is expected to grow to 16 by June 2006. Negotiations are continuing with other consortia with respect to moving towards funding agreements on a continuing basis. Given that the passage through the Senate of the original act, the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Act, was delayed by the Labor Party until October 2005, and therefore access to funds was not possible, it is an outstanding achievement to now have over half the funding agreements completed. The significant progress in putting in place funding agreements simply means that more expenditure will be needed in 2006-07.

In my electorate of Dobell on the Central Coast, trade qualifications are vital. The abolition of technical colleges by the states many years ago has meant that over the past few decades our young people have lacked training and skills pathways. The price we have paid is the severe skill trade shortages we are currently experiencing in many of our key industries. Members opposite do not seem to know that Labor caused this problem. Indeed, when I went to school at Granville we had a technical college. Many technical colleges existed around the Sydney suburbs. Many kids learned a lot of their hands-on trades at school. Those schools no longer exist. They were abandoned by Labor. It is the New South Wales government’s responsibility to look after the education of schoolchildren. Indeed, the additional funding the Australian government is providing represents more assistance to the state government to cover up their failures. And what have they done? They have held up the school based New Apprenticeships Access Program. Their workers compensation regimes are such that they severely limit work experience.

On top of the serious skill shortages that the Central Coast experiences, like so many areas in this country, we have a high youth population and a rapidly growing employment base. That is why the establishment of technical colleges is vital for the Central Coast. There are many students in years 11 and 12 on the coast who do not want to go on to university but want to study trades. Residents and businesses on the Central Coast are grateful that our local area has been chosen to house one of the 25 technical colleges. The unique set-up of the college, with the chance for students to undertake trade training while also completing their year 11 and 12 academic subjects, is a great opportunity for our region. It is also a good opportunity for local employers in the region to work with education providers to establish a college that responds directly to the needs of local industry—and that is exactly what we are doing.

The Central Coast Manufacturers Association, the successful proponent, is doing a fantastic job to get the ATC under way and has been fully supported locally by association members including Albany International, Sara Lee, ADC Krone, Gibbens Industries, Masterfoods, Adhesive Research, Gosfern, Thermit and Pacific Labels. These industries are further supported by the involvement of Australian Business Ltd, the Master Builders Association, the NRMA and the Gosford District Chamber of Commerce and Industry, just to name a few.

The Australian technical colleges will provide young Australians with the opportunity to commence their training in a traditional trade through a school based apprenticeship at certificate III level while at the same time completing academic subjects leading to their year 12 certificate. That is right—the ATCs are not a duplication of TAFE, as Labor likes to suggest. To so suggest is a clear indication of a misunderstanding of the program. The bill will allow up to 7,500 young Australians per year to undertake high-quality education and vocational training. It will be relevant to the nation-building trade career they choose. ATCs will be centres of excellence and the expectation is that they will employ the best possible staff. The colleges must be able to attract and retain the best teachers available, and their capacity to offer attractive working conditions such as performance pay is crucial to their success. This is unlike the TAFE system, where one size fits all—and that is why we were dumbed down to mediocrity in many cases.

ATCs will not charge additional fees. The colleges will be schools, government and non-government, and in respect of recurrent schools funding will be funded on the same basis as existing schools. The Australian technical colleges initiative is an innovative program that offers significant flexibility to allow each college to operate in a manner that best meets the needs of industry and students in the region in which it is established. Having the flexibility to expend funds as they are required is important for the continued success of the program.

In saying this, an Australian technical college must fulfil certain specifications. It must specialise in a particular trade and offer a trade or trades from at least four industries, including metal and engineering, automotive, building and construction, electrotechnology and commercial cookery; it must have links to or be a registered training organisation; it must have a governing body chaired by a local businessperson and consisting of local industry and community representatives; and it must offer flexible employment arrangements.

The New South Wales state government has an ideological opposition to school based New Apprenticeships. Instead of listening to local communities, state Labor has held up the granting of a licence in my electorate. That has meant the technical college for the coast, which by all rights should have been up and running in 2007, has now been held back to 2008. I understand it has been standing in the way of the establishment of technical colleges in various locations across the country, particularly in New South Wales and Western Australia. But this is typical of the Labor Party. Instead of spending its time and energy coming up with good policy, it prefers to play games and obstruct the passing of vital legislation and vital programs that are in the best interests of our communities.

To conclude, a technical college is great news for the people of the Central Coast and puts this region at the forefront of the delivery of vocational and technical education for students undertaking years 11 and 12 schooling. Nationally, this bill will strengthen Australia’s economic base through the introduction of a flexible, highly capable and specialised training system. It should also be noted that the funding of TAFE is a state government responsibility; it is not a federal responsibility, as we have heard many members opposite purport. It is not up to the Howard government to fund TAFEs. That is up to the state governments.

ATCs are about meeting the demands of industry and business, and these technical colleges will provide a highly skilled workforce and put an end to the skills shortage that the Labor Party at both the state and federal levels has helped to bring about. I commend this bill to the House.

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