Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is right, the Hunter Valley Training Co., which is in the electorate of my good friend the member for Paterson, who has a very good relationship with Milton. We both know Milton from that company, but Milton also has an extension of that company in Penrith, called Skillswest. Skillswest has premises where they can undertake mechanics and automotive training, carpentry and bricklaying. Those are a number of the skills that are listed to be offered by these technical colleges. It offered a model in which the children from the public schools could be involved.

I am pretty sure the technical college proposed by the Catholic Education Office in Parramatta will probably be filled just by the Catholic systemic school students in Western Sydney. They would find sufficient kids to do that, and that basically means that everyone in a public school and everyone in a non-Catholic school in Western Sydney is going to miss out. If the New South Wales government had backed the bid of the Hunter Valley Training Co. through Skillswest and if we had been able to get that bid up, we would have seen another 150 places offered to children at the public and non-Catholic schools in Western Sydney, like Nepean High School. I think that would have been a great outcome for the level of money being invested in skills.

Why do kids like the rock eisteddfod rather than trades? I go around music labs in our schools, and they are dynamic. I remember music when I was at school. There was a dilapidated old piano that was invariably out of tune and there were a bunch of recorders. It was not really exciting. For me sport was far more interesting. The member for Parramatta will acknowledge that my singing last night was not the greatest. I probably should have taken music more assiduously at school! But sport was my thing. I was not that interested in music. It did not have a lot of appeal. Science, on the other hand, was fascinating. You had on the wall amazing pictures of the anatomy, the bone structure and the muscle cell structures. You had bunsen burners and some whizzbang experiments that exploded, blew up smoke and turned things different colours. They were, in hindsight, quite dangerous and have since been eliminated from the schools based curriculum. We have seen a flip today. Today music in the schools is vibrant. There are electronic keyboards and there are iPods. You can create your own electronic music with just a computer program. You can learn keyboards. Music is exciting and interesting. It is what I call the discovery channel level of learning.

Science, on the other hand, has not moved on. In fact, I think it has been made less exciting by the elimination of a lot of the interesting stuff. The labs really have not improved. The paint has faded and the labs have got greyer, and kids are not that interested in the technical side of things. That is a real shame. A lot of kids like hands-on learning. Woodwork, metalwork and some other VET courses are offered. But these VET courses only go to level 2. When that child leaves school at the end of grade 12, they must attend TAFE and redo all of that metalwork, all of that carpentry and all of everything else they learned because it is not recognised in going towards a TAFE qualification or trade based skill levels, for which you can earn a wage accordingly.

There is clearly a need for more investment in skills. It really was not coming from the state governments. It really should have been. It should be happening in years 11 and 12. We should be capturing those students in year 10. They are very good students and they are very bright, but they are more hands-on, outdoorsy type kids. They do not want to be tied to books in a classroom. It is not them. Their parents are plumbers and electricians—they are tradies—and they know the family industry fairly well. They have helped out on weekends. If you can capture that interest in years 11 and 12, you can capture a willing and able market. If they wait until the end of year 12 before they move out into the labour market, the wages are a huge disincentive. There are barriers in front of young people who do not have a driver’s licence and are trying to commute by public transport in Western Sydney. Most of the trades work that is done right across Sydney is by tradespeople from Western Sydney. Quite frequently tradesmen in my area go as far as Cronulla and the North Shore for jobs, and the young kids have to get to where the work is. The public transport system means they are getting up at 3.30 or four o’clock in the morning. It becomes arduous. They look at the other kids who have left school and ask, ‘Why am I doing this?’

These technical colleges go a long way to capturing the interest of our children early, to maintaining involvement and to getting them halfway through a trade. As you leave year 12, there will only be two years to go to finish and at least get the trade under their belt. I think the parent is in more of an advantageous position to pressure a young person when they can say: ‘Look, it’s two years. Just finish it. Get your trade, get your diploma, get that under your belt and then you can go and do what you want to do.’ That is better than saying, ‘It’s four years.’ You are not going to convince even the most enthusiastic young person that four years is not an incredibly long time.

I will keep pushing for an Australian technical college in my area. We have got around a lot of the roadblocks that were put in the way by the New South Wales state government. It could be an extension of the Hunter Valley Training Co.’s operation in the Hunter, which is due to open next year. It is full steam ahead and it will be one of the truly outstanding ATCs of the 25 listed. These colleges will cover regions such as Port Macquarie, where the St Joseph’s Vocational College is moving forward with its successful bid; eastern Melbourne, where the Ringwood Secondary College is moving ahead with its successful bid; Gladstone; the Gold Coast; Illawarra; Bairnsdale and Sale, with the Gippsland technical college; Bendigo, which will have the central Victorian college; Geelong, with G-Force Recruitment; Townsville, where the Townsville Chamber of Commerce won the bid; and Adelaide, where the Archdiocese of Adelaide and the Northern Adelaide Industry Group won the Adelaide north bid and where the Port Adelaide Training and Development Centre won the Adelaide south bid. There are 400,000 people in Adelaide and they got two technical colleges. I think that strongly indicates that there should be two for Western Sydney, which has two million people. We have a very strong trades base and a lot of industry to service in New South Wales and greater Sydney.

In Darwin the ATC will be run by the Territory Construction Association. In north Brisbane, Commerce Queensland and Redcliffe City Council made the successful bid. The Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle and the Hunter Valley Training Co. are doing the one in the Hunter, as I have already said. The Tasmanian consortium is doing one for Northern Tasmania. Stirling Skills Training Inc. is doing one for Perth south. I have already mentioned that the Parramatta Catholic Education Office is doing the ATC for Western Sydney. In South Australia, Whyalla and Port Augusta are being serviced by the Catholic Diocese of Port Pirie and the Upper Spencer Gulf Industry and Regional Development Group. At Sunshine the Sunshine Secondary College made the winning bid. In Gosford the Central Coast chamber of manufactures are moving ahead. In Warrnambool, BTEC and the South West Institute of TAFE have made a bid. We are looking at that. I do not know that that has been announced yet. There are a few others that are still to be announced—in the Pilbara, Dubbo, Lismore-Ballina and Queanbeyan—because of issues with the education department to do with recognition of qualifications and industrial disputes about AWAs et cetera. That is quite an extraordinary aspect of the state government.

Our Investing in Our Schools program is a great program that looks at delivering funds for improvements to facilities in schools. For years I have been saying to our government: ‘You keep on saying that more and more money is going to schools’—which is true; we have increased and increased funding to schools in our 10 years of government—‘but I am not seeing it on the ground. Nepean High School in my electorate does not see that money. If all those increases per capita had gone directly to the students at Nepean High, the school should have seen significant increases in its operational budget, but it has not.’

The Investing in Our Schools program is great. The funds go straight to the schools and bypasses the New South Wales state government. But—wouldn’t you know it?—the state government gets an administration fee. We found out yesterday that the state government has been creaming—and in some states, it is up to 16 per cent—off the Investing in Our Schools program. How hard can we try? We are trying to get money to the coalface, where it needs to be spent and, as a federal government, we must go through the states one way or another. Somehow, when we finally found a way to circumvent these guys, they still have their sticky fingers in the till and are pulling out some money. I think that was one of the major problems with the ATCs—they could not get their sticky fingers on that money. They did not like the schools based apprenticeships, because it seemed to knock out their sticky fingers a bit. It almost seems as though we have to pay them off and say: ‘Here’s your 16 per cent up front. Can you let the rest go?’

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