Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There are 100 people enrolled now. Training trades and skilled people does not take six months; most apprenticeships are actually three or four years long. You work it out. If there are 100 people enrolled now, there is a time that they take to finish a course. My maths are fine. Your maths are not very good if you do not realise that you are at least 99,000 short.

This is very much a political solution. As I said, our need to deal with this skills crisis is urgent. We really have to act now. But one of the worst aspects of this program is the bungling in the administration of the program. There are currently fewer than 100 students across Australia that are enrolled in the four technical colleges that are currently operating in East Melbourne, Gladstone, the Gold Coast in Queensland and Port Macquarie. Another will open soon in northern Tasmania.

The Minister for Vocational and Technical Education has recently threatened to scrap the colleges in Dubbo, Queanbeyan and Lismore-Ballina, and the successful consortium in Darwin have also been threatened with the loss of their $17 million in funding. So, in spite of the urgency and in spite of this being a program announced in 2004, we still have a long way to go in seeing those 25 technical colleges actually roll out.

In contrast, a Beazley Labor government will care about education. We care about it passionately on this side of the House. We believe in the need to build an education system that teaches young Australians how to work, and we believe in the need to have it now. Train Australians now. The urgency is now. The urgency has been around for 10 years—we are 10 years too late—but even now is better than in another 10 years. We really cannot wait.

When you make young people wait—when people who turn 17 cannot get the opportunity; they turn 18, and they cannot get the opportunity; they turn 19, and they cannot get the opportunity—you profoundly impact on their whole lives. Lives do not wait for governments to act. They really do not. Particularly young people’s lives do not wait. Every year you delay, every year you get it wrong and every year you make it hard impacts on the rest of that person’s life. Every year their career is held back, their confidence falls. Their CV does not look as good as it should early enough. Every single year they cannot invest in their future. Every single year they are not paying superannuation. Lives do not wait for governments to act. This is urgent. Train Australians now. Get on with it.

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