Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Resources, Forestry and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

We could say the previous contribution, from the member for Kingston, was short, but I suppose it reflects the government’s lack of commitment to the important debate about apprenticeships. I know that, as a Bankstown boy and a graduate of the Western Sydney school of hard knocks, Mr Deputy Speaker Hatton, you know the importance of apprenticeship training. It has been at the centre of western suburbs activities for many years. In that context, this debate on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006 is of fundamental importance to Australia’s future growth prospects. It is about the skills of our nation and our capacity to attract and retain investment in Australia at a time when we, as a nation, are riding the resources boom. Potentially, the biggest barrier to continuing that resource boom is a lack of trained working men and women in Australia.

We all accept that apprenticeship training has become one of the critical issues. It is the issue that the companies I deal with as shadow minister for resources, forestry and tourism discuss on a regular basis. Even this week I have had some of the biggest resource companies in Australia in the iron ore, the coal and the oil and gas industries in my office discussing a range of issues. The issue they continue to raise and pursue with me is the lack of commitment of the Howard government to the all-important question of apprenticeship training. That reflects yet again the incompetence of the Howard government.

It is inconceivable that the government have failed to appreciate the fierce competition in industry to attract tradespeople in Australia at the moment. It is reflected by the fact that, for example, in Western Australia at the moment a bricklayer can earn $1,000 a day. A tradesperson in Western Australia in the resource sector can knock out $180,000 a year. There is only one reason they can attract those salaries and wages at the moment: there is a shortage of tradespeople. The government are responsible for that because they always like to talk about wage pressure, but you have to understand that wage pressure also reflects the importance of supply and demand in Australia. Their policy on the industrial relations front, therefore, is not about productivity and driving training in Australia but about trying to force down the wages of the lowest paid and the more needy in the Australian community—the hospitality workers, the child-care workers, the cleaners, the security workers. The semiskilled and unskilled people are demanding a bit of a leg-up in the Australian community.

I would have thought we should have had a policy which was about training all Australians, giving them all the chance to benefit from the opportunities that exist in Australia at the moment, whilst also saying to the less privileged in the Australian community that people have to do the mundane work that we expect to be done—like cleaning Parliament House, looking after aged people and looking after children in child-care centres—and that we should look after those people in a decent industrial relations system. I say that because the skills shortage in Australia at the moment is having a huge impact on wages and therefore has inflationary ramifications for the overall management of the Australian economy. You cannot isolate these pressures.

I would also go as far as to say that the shortage of skilled tradespeople has in fact become a real threat to our economic prosperity, given the production constraints it is causing. That effectively means that there are now barriers to investment in Australia. Once you start to lose investment, you lose it for many years to come because, when a particular multinational invests in another country, it creates a hub of investment activity and makes long-term decisions. It is not going to chop and change those decisions based on whether or not Australia, in five, 10 or 15 years time, resolves its shortage of skilled tradespeople.

This impact is being felt across many industries, particularly mining and tourism—our top commodities and service sector export industries. Indeed, only last month mining industry analysts foresaw production constraints for companies such as BHP becoming an issue much sooner than expected because of these shortages. If you have any doubts about that, just think about the potential development of Olympic Dam in South Australia. Hopefully, there will be approvals by the end of next year. Where are the tradespeople going to come from? Think about what is going on in the North West Shelf fourth gas train and the expansion of the iron ore facilities in the north-western area of Western Australia. Think about construction on the east coast—the duplication, for example, of the Gateway Bridge near the Brisbane airport. Think about the ongoing upgrade of the Hume Highway. Where are we going to get the operators and tradespeople? All we are going to end up with is more pressure on the wages system of Australia. That is why I say that, if you go to areas such as Gove, Groote Eylandt, Mount Isa, Karratha, Paraburdoo or Port Hedland, you just cannot see the tradespeople coming through when you see all the difficulties being faced by industry. I also say in that context that there is an onus on them to do more. I can think back over the last five, 10 or 15 years to when these companies closed their apprenticeship training centres. All of a sudden, they have realised that was a bad decision. Training was not a cost to running a business; it was an investment in their future. So they have also contributed to the shortage with a lack of commitment in the past, but they have learnt from the error of their ways on this issue.

On that note, while I appreciate the concerns of the Minister for Vocational and Technical Education, Mr Gary Hardgrave, in matching the needs of the unemployed within the mining industry, I believe this is merely another sign of desperation from a government that has failed to invest in vocational education over the last decade. I refer to the problem pointed out by the Minerals Council of Australia. They said that there is very little point providing government incentives for unskilled workers when it is skilled workers that the industry is crying out for. I am staggered at his naivety in acknowledging that the current unemployment incentive of a $25 a week living-away-from home allowance would not be sufficient. Whilst he is considering at the moment whether an allowance of $100 or even $250 would be enough, he might take a look at the rental lists in the Pilbara, for example, where the average housing costs are around $600 a week because of the expansion that is going on in that area.

In the tourism industry there is a current shortage of 7,000 positions and a forecast of an additional deficit of up to 15,000 people a year. The National Tourism Investment Strategy identified that 130,000 workers would be needed over the next decade but, with its current share of employment growth, tourism would only secure 45,000 workers. Tourism is so important in winning export dollars. At the moment we have an advertising campaign which is about encouraging people to come to Australia from traditional markets such as the United Kingdom, Europe and North America, but a huge priority is China. You have to understand that, if you want to attract and encourage these people and for them to tell others to come down to Australia, it has to be a quality product. Unless you have trained workers, you do not produce a quality product. That represents a long-term threat to the tourism industry in Australia. I recently saw this when I went to a tourism forum in Northern Queensland, where I discovered that exclusive resorts are considering closing some of their operations due to staff shortages. Who would have thought that would happen in the 21st century—a time when we have got a huge trade problem?

At the same time, new hospitality graduates are coming out of their courses and being picked up by the mining industry to feed the resources boom. The problem for the hospitality industry is that, whilst it might train a few people from time to time, it cannot compete on the wages front—which points to the need to do more on the training front.

While a boom time is contributing to shortages, it is the neglect of our vocational education training system over the last decade that has to be highlighted in this debate. I think there is also a problem in the community—not just a lack of commitment and leadership shown by the government. The community has got to accept that a university education is not the be-all and end-all of life. Apprenticeships are exceptionally important to the future of Australia. Just think about another problem confronting Australia at the moment. A tradesperson in their mid-20s can knock out over $100,000 a year. How are we going to attract and retain nurses and teachers on the salaries they are being paid at the moment compared to what is being achieved by a tradesperson? An apprenticeship is the right thing for young people to do. You do not have to go to university; do an apprenticeship. You will be better off, for example, than becoming—and this is a problem for the Australian community—a teacher or a nurse, because they are not appropriately rewarded. We have a huge problem in the rewards paid to those in some of our important occupations in Australia at the moment.

In Europe, master tradespeople are treated in the same way as those who receive doctorates. They have an important status in the international community, but not in Australia. For far too long we have downplayed the importance of apprenticeships. I think we need a system that elevates the status in society of a master artisan to that of someone with a doctorate. There is interestingly an organisation in Australia, the International Specialised Skills Institute, under the patronage of Sir James Gobbo, that is striving to do this.

But it is a more fundamental debate. We have to make sure that we lift the supply of tradespeople in Australia so that we can command international investment in Australia. This is about saying to the international investment community: ‘You want a stable political opportunity. Australia offers that—a very secure place for investment.’ Unfortunately, we are giving them another message at the moment, that we do not have the tradespeople to facilitate their investment in Australia. We have to get serious about resolving this problem.

What is the government’s answer? They have a special visa category for bringing in overseas apprentices. It is not good enough. I have young people in my electorate in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, where we continue to have a disproportionately high level of youth unemployment and long-term unemployment, who actually want an apprenticeship. It is about additional places supported by government. Do not ask me to put my hand up to give apprenticeships to kids from overseas. I am more concerned about kids in my electorate, in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, in the constituency of Batman. In suburbs such as Preston, Reservoir and King Island Park, kids are finding it hard to get through to year 10, let alone years 11 and 12. These are kids who cannot get an apprenticeship because of the lack of support for apprenticeship opportunities by the Australian government.

Let us stop running down skills in Australia. Let us stop treating an apprenticeship as a second-class opportunity in life. Let us say to the Australian government: ‘We’re uncomfortable, because of your failure, with importing unskilled workers at the expense of young Australians in the 21st century. We require additional resources.’ The Australian community would welcome additional resources in the TAFE sector. It is a sector in the Australian community that is always valued, as you and I appreciate, Mr Deputy Speaker Hatton, because we come from the western suburbs of Sydney. We historically had well-performing and respected TAFE colleges where kids went and did their apprenticeships. Maybe we also have to think about whether or not we should revitalise some of those institutions. There should not be competition between the Commonwealth and the state and territory governments; they should work together. It is about getting them in place on the ground. We have to reach that point in the very near future because we have neglected it for far too long.

Our problem is that the Howard government’s proposal will not produce a tradesperson until 2010. We need them now. The resources, tourism, energy and forestry sectors are saying to me: ‘We need them now. You’ve got to push this government to get serious about this debate.’ Only four of the 25 colleges are operating at the moment, with fewer than 100 students. Minister Hardgrave is all over the place, threatening to scrap some colleges while refusing to reveal funding arrangements for any of them. While we wait for new apprentices to appear from these bungled new technical colleges promoted by the Australian government, the Australian Industry Group predicts that in less than four years we will need an extra 100,000 skilled workers in Australia. Otherwise, we are going to drop the ball on the economic front.

It is now that we have to get serious about these issues. It is also about making some tough decisions. I do not see the government talking about, for example, the ACT government announcement of a fortnight ago. Chefs will now have an apprenticeship of two rather than four years. That is the way to go: streamline the apprenticeship system, concentrate on the skills and give the kids the support that they need. It is not just in the ACT. In Victoria the automotive engineering apprenticeship, by agreement between government, unions and employers, has now been reduced from four to three years, provided the kids do the three-month prevocational course in years 11 and 12 at school. It also means that their starting rate, once they leave school, is the second year apprenticeship rate followed by the third and fourth year apprenticeship rates in their second and third years. Think what that means to kids: a shorter apprenticeship and more money in their pockets. That is the way to do it—not with bungled announcements on Australian technical colleges and brawls with state and territory governments but with tripartite cooperation between employers, all levels of government and the union movement, which actually wants to assist these kids to achieve something in life. We have to get serious about this debate, because the response by the government has been all too inadequate. The government has to start cooperating at local, state and territory levels and with representatives of the Australian community and employers to get it right.

The cues are coming from the Victorian and Queensland governments. They have made very detailed statements about the need to completely review, trade by trade, the apprenticeship training system in Australia. It might be appropriate, for example, that we continue to have a four-year apprenticeship for electrical tradespeople. It is not for me to decide; it is for industry. Alternatively, in Canberra we now have two years for the training of a chef, a highly skilled person sought after not only in Australia but internationally. This is about immediate action to get people into the necessary skilled occupations so that they produce the goods, attract investment, increase exports and enlarge Australia’s economic cake into the future. If we do that, we also look after those people in retirement. It is about greater economic prosperity in Australia and looking after those people, our parents and our grandparents, who have built the opportunities that we now benefit from, including the resource boom. It is about attracting people now.

I refer to the figures from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research which show that, at the end of last year, there were 389,000 new apprentices in training compared to 390,700 in 2004 and 393,500 in 2003. This is, unfortunately, the lowest number of Australians in new apprenticeships since early 2003. We have to start looking at these figures. For the government, the problem is that the figures tell the truth. When you listen to the rhetoric of the government during question time, they tell us that we have record numbers of apprentices, but when you actually break down the numbers and look at the traditional trades you see we have gone backwards year after year. We have shortages at the moment in the traditional trades. I was shadow minister for employment and training in 1996 when the Howard government first came to office. We expressed our concerns then about hiding in the so-called overall apprenticeship front, which historically included the traineeships, what was really happening on the traditional trade front.

Unfortunately, our predictions and warnings have proved to be correct. It was a cover for doing nothing. It was a cover for not being serious about becoming an electrician, a bricklayer, a painter or a plumber—all the traditional trades that have served Australia so well over such an extended period. There was a debate in here recently about the Snowy Mountains scheme. Think about all the people who worked as tradespeople and who were trained as a result of that historic nation-building opportunity. Down through the decades we as a nation have prided ourselves on training good apprentices and good tradespeople. We are no longer a nation that can hold our head high on that front, because we have gone backwards.

I simply say that this is about a real policy debate—not these funny little technical colleges that the government likes to suggest are going to solve the problems. It is about real money for additional places and cooperation between all levels of government, the private sector and unions. That is what mum and dad want out in the suburbs in the Australian community. They believe in apprenticeships and they want the government to do more. They want the duckshoving to stop between the different levels of government. The Labor Party has said that it is going to—

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