Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian technical colleges have been a story of duplication and a saga of incompetence. In a federation it is important that the Commonwealth and state governments work together to fix matters of national importance. Governments, especially for the last 20 years or so, have been working to reduce duplication, to streamline the operations of government, to reach efficiencies and to reduce the overlap between what federal and state governments do. The creation of Australian technical colleges goes against this trend. This policy does not reduce duplication; it creates it. I cannot think of any precedents for this sort of duplication being created by a Commonwealth government. We have public schools and TAFEs doing a good job with very limited resources, yet the government has seen fit to attempt to completely duplicate that system.

We just heard from the honourable member for Pearce, a member for whom I have a considerable degree of respect. Although I do not agree with her conclusions, she said that she acknowledged the work being done by her local technical colleges and schools in the Swan district. I am sure that is right, and I am sure that that is an issue that you have an interest in, Mr Deputy Speaker Wilkie. We recognise that TAFEs and public schools are doing the best they can with limited resources, yet this government has chosen to completely duplicate the system. Let us imagine what could have been done if the federal government, instead of attempting to create a new system from scratch, had put the money into the existing TAFE and public school systems. We have the situation where over 40,000 young Australians are being turned away from TAFE every year and this government, instead of working with the state governments to fix that, instead of putting money into the TAFE system, is trying to create its own system. Not only has this seen a ridiculous level of duplication but we have seen it incompetently implemented.

In preparing for this speech on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006 this morning I got out my notes from the original Australian technical colleges bill and the contribution I made in that debate. I was surprised to see that it was almost exactly one year ago that I spoke in that debate. It has been almost a year to the day that this House was considering the original Australian technical colleges bill. In that speech I warned that creating a new system would have start-up costs and a start-up lag and that the amount of time it would take to create these Australian technical colleges would be very substantial. I am sorry to say that I was right. But I am also sorry to say that it has taken even longer than I thought it would. I was amazed to hear the Minister for Vocational and Technical Education boasting in his second reading speech that this bill was a measure of:

... the great successes which have been achieved to date in implementing the Australian technical colleges initiative.

I do not believe a minister could come into this House and say that with a straight face. Not even the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, at the table, is keeping a straight face when he hears the Minister for Vocational Education and Training saying, ‘This is a mark of how successful we have been.’ By now there were meant to be 25 colleges operating. How many do we have? Four. And how many students are in these colleges? There are 300—not 300 each but 300 across the nation. There were meant to be 7,500. Again I quote the minister boasting in his second reading speech:

I am happy to report to the House that, already, four colleges are in operation, with another to commence later this year—the one in northern Tasmania—and at least 20 are expected to be in operation in 2007.

The minister did not share with the House the fact that there were meant to be 25 operating by a now. He only shared with the House that there were four. Those four are in Gladstone, Port Macquarie, Eastern Melbourne and the Gold Coast. Port Macquarie is a very interesting case in point. I was interested to read the comments of the principal of the Port Macquarie college, who indicated that they had been doing this since the 1970s and that there had only been a few extra students introduced to the school as a result of the Australian technical colleges initiative. So a large proportion of those 300 students the government claim are now in technical education because of their initiative were already in technical education at the school at Port Macquarie. Of course, who can forget Gladstone—a technical college with one student? I am all in favour of good teacher to student ratios, but one student is a bit ridiculous. This shows the incompetence of this government and the incompetence of this minister. The minister blames everybody else for his incompetence. Again I quote the minister in his second reading speech:

It is another example of how the Howard government’s election commitment has been so enthusiastically embraced by the community, by industry and by employers.

That is a very interesting quote. By itself, in isolation, you cannot take issue with it. But these are the very people he blames for his incompetence. These are the very people he blames for the fact that there are only four colleges in existence. As reported in the Australian on 25 April this year:

Mr Hardgrave said three colleges announced in NSW at Dubbo, Queanbeyan and Lismore/Ballina on the far north coast could be scrapped within weeks unless he received a “clear indication” from the community of local support.

He went on to say:

“In the case of those communities—if they don’t take up the offer we will have to look at other regions,”

When asked if he was worried about the lack of progress, he said:

“Absolutely, I am worried about it. I am going to Darwin next week to give them a hurry up.

“You’ve got to actually extract a digit and do something ... ”

That is a direct quote from the minister, blaming everybody but himself, blaming the community for their lack of enthusiasm, when he and his department have not been able to get more than 300 students—at a very generous interpretation—so far in the Australian technical colleges, one year after the bill passed the House and two years since the government made its commitment.

The Minister for Vocational and Technical Education would have to qualify for this government’s least competent minister, and that is a big call. He specialises in bluster, bluff and question time buffoonery and not in delivering the outcomes that this nation needs. We cannot afford an incompetent minister in this particular area. The government has a very long tail when it comes to its ministry. The junior level of the ministry is particularly incompetent, but this is one area where the nation cannot afford to have an incompetent minister in the chair. The Prime Minister said:

... the technical colleges are the centrepiece of our drive to tackle skills shortages and to revolutionise vocational education in Australia ...

So here we have the government’s self-admitted centrepiece of its policy failing through the minister’s incompetence. But, to be fair, that is due not only to the minister’s incompetence but, in addition, to the government’s ideological obsession with Australian workplace agreements.

I was interested to hear one of the rare contributions in the policy debate in this House from the honourable member for Greenway earlier. She blamed the unions for the lack of an Australian technical college being established in Western Sydney. She said that the unions’ and the state government’s obsession with awards was stopping a college being opened in Western Sydney.

The federal government’s ideological obsession in not giving people choice, in insisting that employees of the Australian technical colleges be given Australian workplace agreements, means that communities, workers and potential teachers are saying, ‘What about our working conditions?’ The government arrogantly say: ‘You’ll cop it. If you don’t like it, we’ll go somewhere else.’ The Minister for Vocational and Technical Education says, ‘I’m going to Darwin to give them a hurry-up and to tell them that they have to take AWAs.’ So we have the intersection of the government’s ideological obsession with individual contracts and AWAs and their ham-fisted attempts to fix the skills crisis in this nation.

If the government wants to introduce flexibility into the employment arrangements in Australian technical colleges, it can. It can have any range of industrial instruments. Some colleges might choose to offer Australian workplace agreements. Others might choose to offer common-law contracts to achieve their flexibility. Others would be happy with an award and enterprise agreement. But this government insists.

The reason we cannot afford to have this sort of incompetence and this sort of ideological obsession is that the skills crisis is in the first order of economic problems facing this nation. We have heard warnings from the Reserve Bank of Australia, the OECD, the Australian Industry Group, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Australian Council of Trade Unions. The Australian Industry Group recently conducted a survey of over 500 businesses, and they found that the inability to find skilled staff was the biggest barrier to growth. The AiG passed comment on the recent budget. They said:

We’re disappointed there wasn’t more progress ... made in some of the big nation-building areas, particularly skills, which ... was fairly underdone in the Budget.

I think the AiG might have been a bit generous in saying that it was ‘fairly underdone’—it was more than ‘fairly underdone’; it was totally neglected—but I agree with the thrust of their sentiments.

The Australian Industry Group issued a discussion paper back in 2004, warning that we would need 100,000 new tradespeople by 2010. Back in 2004, they were warning that we would need 100,000, and this government’s contribution is 300. The St George-Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Small Business Survey, which comes out regularly, consistently shows that the skills crisis is one of the biggest problems facing small business in this country.

The Governor of the Reserve Bank has been warning about this issue. He warned about it in his statement to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration in early 2005. Both the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, at the table, and I were then on that committee, and we heard the Governor of the Reserve Bank warn that the skills crisis was one of the biggest economic challenges facing this nation. He has repeated that in every monetary policy statement since, in every appearance before the House of Representatives economics committee and in every public statement that he has made.

Personally, I am singularly unsurprised that this is the biggest challenge facing our economy, because I represent in this House the biggest industrial estate in the Southern Hemisphere, at Smithfield-Wetherill Park. I go around to the factories. I talk to the recruitment managers. They tell me that it is impossible for them to get an appropriately qualified, skilled workforce—that they have trouble attracting people to come and work in the biggest industrial estate in this country.

As I said, the Australian Industry Group have indicated that we need 100,000 extra skilled workers by 2010. The government’s centrepiece is producing 300. Even if we believe their projections, they say that we might get to 7,500 a year. Even if the minister manages to get his act together—if he, in his words, ‘pulls his digit out’ and actually gets something done—then, even if it is as successful as the government say it will be, they will get to 7,500 a year. The breathtaking incompetence that we have seen this far indicates that not even 7,500 a year is achievable.

And, of course, the government deals with the shortfall by importing the difference. We see, day after day, in question time and in examples brought forward predominantly by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the government plugging the issues of skills shortages and apprenticeships by issuing foreign worker visas. And this is the problem, the result, of 10 years of neglect by this government. Public investment in universities and TAFEs has fallen by eight per cent since 1996. The average across the OECD is a 38 per cent increase. Yet Australia is the only OECD nation to actually reduce the amount of government money going into universities and technical colleges. That has been this government’s contribution.

I support the amendment moved by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition because fixing the skills crisis in this nation is not only important economically—it is also important socially. We are seeing 40,000 young people every year being turned away from TAFEs. That is bad for our economy, but it goes without saying that it is also bad for those young individuals. Their hopes and, as the Prime Minister would say, their aspirations are being dashed. Their aspirations to be tradespeople, perhaps to start small businesses, to grow their small businesses and provide for their families are being dashed. Why? Because this government is wasting $350 million, duplicating a training and education system which already exists—not only creating start-up costs but start-up lags, which means that the numbers of apprenticeships and skilled tradespeople that we need are not being created. Instead of working with the states, instead of putting aside its ideological obsession, it is creating just 300 apprentices a year. It is doing nothing about improving our apprenticeship completion rates. Forty per cent of people who start an apprenticeship in this nation do not finish it. Can you imagine what it would do for the skills crisis in this nation if we could get that figure down—if we could halve it or better? But this government completely ignores the problem and does nothing about it.

Why doesn’t the government take up Labor’s policy of introducing a trade completion bonus of $2,000, to be given to every apprentice on the completion of their apprenticeship? I am not saying that would convince every apprentice to finish their training; some apprentices clearly just feel that they have made the wrong choice. But any economist would tell you that a $2,000 incentive to finish their training would play an important role in getting people to finish their apprenticeships.

Why doesn’t the government take up Labor’s plan, announced by the Leader of the Opposition, of abolishing TAFE fees for traditional apprenticeships? Why doesn’t the federal government take it up? It is not a matter—

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