Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

As my good colleague points out, it is an absolute disgrace. There are other problems with these technical colleges. Essentially a lot of secrecy has surrounded them. We have had great difficulty in pinning down the specific funding for individual colleges. There is concern about the slow progress of implementation. As at 30 May 2006 only $18 million out of the $185 million has been spent. We are a bit confused as to why we need to bring forward money from two years out to spend this year and next year, when we have not even spent what was allocated for this year.

The minister said that the figure of $18 million that we have talked about was plucked out of thin air. It was not. The figure was given just recently in evidence to the Senate estimates. The department itself said that only $18 million has been spent. The truth is that it is a case of too little too late. This system that the government has introduced will produce its first qualified trades persons not next year or the year after but in 2010. What sort of solution is that to our trades crisis?

In his second reading speech the minister said that the Australian technical colleges initiative had been enthusiastically embraced by the community, industry and employers. He gave examples of Adelaide South, North Brisbane, Warrnambool and Geelong. All of these colleges are yet to open. The point I made before was that only four have opened: Port Macquarie, Eastern Melbourne, the Gold Coast and Gladstone. They have a total enrolment of 300. I was in Gladstone a couple of weeks ago. Do you know how many they have at their college? One person.

The government talks about this being a great initiative, but the truth is that this initiative is failing to deliver on the ground. In my home state of Victoria there is only one college for the whole of the eastern side of Melbourne. I represent the seat of Hotham, in the south-east of Melbourne. It is very interesting, because the one college, Eastern Melbourne, has two campuses. One is at the Ringwood Secondary College, an existing school in the electorate of Deakin—a Liberal seat. The other is St Joseph’s College, in Ferntree Gully, which is in the electorate of La Trobe—another Liberal seat. But there is nothing in my electorate or in the electorates of Chisholm, Bruce, Holt or Isaacs—all Labor seats. So ask yourself: is need determined by who happens to hold the seat? Is that the way we run government these days? Is that the control that this government is now applying—that the only people who get these technical colleges are those who vote for the Liberal Party? I have been unable to find any information about any activity at Ringwood. At St Joseph’s, if you go to the school’s website, you see that the funding appears to have been used to build a new technology centre and to extend existing training programs.

There can be a better way of dealing with this problem. When we were in office we made a real commitment to lifting the skills and the educational ability of our people. We massively increased schools funding by 55 per cent in real terms. We increased TAFE funding by 56 per cent in real terms, and we increased funding for universities by 60 per cent in real terms. We established the National Training Authority to provide an umbrella framework to overcome the differences between states so as to operate as a national system of training. Under the Working Nation program we sought to re-engage the long-term unemployed through Work for the Dole and training them—not just to do menial jobs but to acquire skills that were recognisable and to build confidence to get them work ready. That is a smart way to reconnect the unemployed in our community.

Labor established Netforce, a mechanism for extending the training regimes beyond the traditional trades into the new economy industries. In that period of time, we saw the doubling of the traditional apprenticeship system and the creation of another 36,000-plus traineeships. That all happened up until 1996, when this government came to office. And what did they do? They abolished Netforce, they abolished the Australian National Training Authority and they promised to boost apprenticeships, but all they did was to roll in traineeships and call them apprenticeships and claim that was the increase that they had promised during the election campaign.

Now it is reported that they will change the name again from New Apprenticeships to Australian Apprenticeships. You know how much that is going to cost? $24 million—just to change the name. This is a government that will spend a fortune on branding but nothing on real training. In its first two budgets this government slashed $240 million from the vocational education and training sector. It then froze funding until 2000. No wonder we have a skills crisis. Yet what is the response 10 years after that carnage? It is to announce 25 technical colleges, and two years later again we have only four, teaching 300 students. This is a government that does not build skills; it is a government that deskills, and it is why this country is being held back.

This skills shortage problem is nowhere more important than in regional Australia. It is now really holding back our regions and the ability of industries to build their communities, where these same communities are struggling to retain trained people. The Howard government in the most recent budget cut $13.7 million from an incentive program to encourage rural and regional businesses to take on apprentices.

Again I ask people to contrast their record with what we did when we were in office. We had a solution to this problem for the regions when we were in office. We set up area consultative committees under the Working Nation program to ensure that local training programs matched local industry needs. The objective—and I was Minister for Employment, Education and Training at the time—was to get a proper match between the local supply of labour and that which the region was demanding of it. The area consultative committees were resourced to undertake skills audits, to identify the skills and the deficiencies within particular regions. We involved the local chambers of commerce and industry in the task of identifying and working through the problem. We worked with them to establish what their demand for labour was—not what Canberra determined for them but what the locals said. Who best to understand their needs than those connected with the regions? That was the whole purpose of this program: tell us what your demand is and we will, through the Working Nation program, match it with the supply. We will give you the people with the training that is needed.

As a result of that leadership from the regions as well as the resources of government—the partnership that is so essential—300,000 jobs were placed by area consultative committees in the last six months of Labor’s term. What it demonstrates is that if you empower regions, if you ask them for leadership and you resource them, they get results. We still have the area consultative committees. I am pleased about that. They are a legacy that has remained. The problem is that they have not had the capacity for the last 10 years to continue the vital function not only that they were given but that they proved themselves adept at delivering on. Labor has demonstrated that you can address this issue. Regions need government support to empower and resource them to meet their needs.

I have recently been consulting widely with these same area consultative committees. Everywhere I go, these bodies are telling me that their region is being held back by shortages across a range of trades and industries. Some have been tasked, interestingly, by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs as being agents in assessing their local need for skilled migration. But the area consultative committees can do more. They should be resourced to identify opportunities to train young Australians, unemployed people and people who get retrenched, so that they can meet the future needs of their region. This is the opportunity that the government is missing out on. By all means get the 25 colleges established—if they are ever capable of doing it. But the real opportunity is to have a national system for the training of our future and our people. (Time expired)

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