Kelly Hoare (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I thank the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and the shadow parliamentary secretary for industry, infrastructure and industrial relations, who are at the table, for facilitating the passage of the Do Not Call Register Bill 2006 by supporting the amendment from the Senate, because that might now allow us to leave at the normal time this afternoon.

I am pleased to be able to speak today on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006. After 10 long years, the Howard government have finally woken up to Australia’s massive skills shortages. Over the past 10 years the government have been advised by many industry groups, including the BCA, the Reserve Bank and others, that these skills shortages have been getting greater and greater. The Howard government not only did nothing to address the skills shortage crisis over the last 10 years but actually contributed to the skills shortage. Under 10 years of the Howard government, Australia is now the only developed country to reduce public investment in TAFEs and universities by eight per cent, but the OECD average over the same period was an increase of 38 per cent.

The member for Deakin has just engaged in a slanging match with the New South Wales and Victorian governments, saying that the New South Wales government was now following the lead of the technical colleges. I must let the member for Deakin know that he is wrong. The New South Wales government has taken the lead in technology high schools. One of those high schools is in my electorate. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the principal and the staff—all the teachers and all the assistants—and the students, parents, families and friends of Glendale Technology High School.

Glendale Technology High School is a progressive centre of learning and has about 860 students. It has won various awards over the years, and I am always very pleased to be associated with Principal June Hingston, her staff and her students. This year, the school was awarded the Director-General’s Award for School Excellence. This award recognised the excellent transition programs that the school has developed with the local primary schools and the well-established links with TAFE, New South Wales industry and the community. That is just one of the accolades that the Glendale Technology High School has received in promoting the kinds of courses that we are looking at with the Australian technical colleges.

The senior school—that is, years 11 and 12, which this bill also refers to—has an extremely wide range of courses which lead to the higher school certificate; joint courses with TAFE, some of which involve a work experience component; and also vocational courses. The school is in the fortunate position of being co-located next to the Glendale campus of the Hunter Institute of TAFE, allowing them to forge good relationships and to further develop them for the benefit of the whole school community.

This bill brings forward funding for the proposed 25 Australian technical colleges from 2008-09 to 2006-07. The total level of funding will remain the same. The bill also establishes the regulation-making power to allow for funding to be carried over or brought forward into another calendar year, removing in future the need for recourse to legislation such as this bill to alter the timing of the funding.

Items 1 to 5 of schedule 1 of the bill amend section 18(4) of the principal act, transferring the funds between those financial years. The reallocation brings forward money from 2008-09 to be spent in 2006-07. However, the overall funding remains unchanged. What is proposed with this amendment is that the funding be $110 million for 2006, $110 million in 2007, $55 million in 2008 and $52.783 million in 2009.

These extra resources for trade training and skills development are welcomed by Labor. As has been said, 25 colleges are to be built across Australia in 24 regions. However, concerns have been expressed in this discussion over the past few days that only four of these technical colleges are open, despite the election promise back in 2004 that these colleges were going to be opened if the coalition were returned to government. So the original decision was made in 2004 and the budget allocation was made in May 2005, yet only four of these Australian technical colleges are open. We hope that the majority, if not all, of the technical colleges will be open by 2006. That will allow our students in our communities to attend these colleges if they so wish. As at 30 May 2006, $185 million had been committed to the Australian technical colleges but only $18 million had been spent. The total budget for these technical colleges is $343 million over five years.

As I said, we have raised concerns—in particular, in the contribution made by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. These concerns included the bungled process—why we do not have these technical colleges up and running already—the lack of transparency in the tender process, the lack of access by the opposition to data on the specific funding of these colleges and other questions.

Indeed, the member for Deakin kept repeating that there would be no additional fees payable to attend these colleges. I asked him: ‘Additional to what?’ and he did not answer me—additional to the fees that these private organisations charge anyway? That was what was evident in a government backbench briefing that we were able to get our hands on. The coalition backbench briefing was evidence that the government’s technical colleges were dreamt up on the run during the 2004 election campaign, and there have already been changes to what was proposed in 2004, including breaking the Prime Minister’s promises of no student fees, cutting the funding in the first three years by $33.3 million and pulling out of the public tendering process.

Opposition senators produced a report after the inquiry into this legislation. At paragraph 2.3, the senators indicated:

A lack of financial transparency surrounding these Colleges is of concern. The Government has, at two Senate Estimates hearings, refused to provide details of the 11 funding contracts signed with individual Colleges.

I have a list of my own questions which I hope the minister might be able to answer in his summing up so that we can move forward on these proposals. These are some of my questions. How will the staff, both the academic teachers and the vocational teachers, be recruited to the Australian technical colleges? Will the students who attend the Australian technical colleges actually participate in paid work; if this is going to be part of a trade training program, will they be able to participate in paid work as all apprentices do? Will the teachers who are recruited be offered AWAs; and, if they are offered AWAs, will they have the right to refuse those AWAs and then have the right to collectively bargain? This bill provides for four years of funding for the set-up of the Australian technical colleges, and I have a question regarding the ongoing support for the Australian technical colleges: will they be adequately maintained? As we know, technology changes in all areas, including in the trades area, and upgrades will be required.

Will there be fees involved? We have seen from that backbench report that there will be fees involved. Will the technical colleges be classed as private schools and how will the students be selected? I welcome the technical college for the Hunter, and there will be one in Gosford as well. There are going to be a large number of students who want to attend these technical colleges. What are going to be the criteria for their entrance? Will those young people who live in my electorate of Charlton and who might wish to travel to Newcastle or Singleton to attend an Australian technical college be assisted with their travel costs? There will be a lot of costs involved because of the fair distances between the technical colleges. Will the teachers employed be able to be members of a union? What transparency and review mechanisms will be available? We want to know how many colleges will be opened next year and how they will operate.

As I said, we welcome this. We have been talking for 10 long years about the massive skill shortages in this country. Yesterday those shortages were reaffirmed by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations skilled vacancies index for June 2006. It said the vacancies for trade positions rose by 1.6 per cent in just one month. The vacancies are there because there are not the tradespeople to fill them. The skilled vacancies index showed that vacancies in the metal trades rose 3.1 per cent, in construction 2.1 per cent, in the automotive trades 0.8 per cent, for chefs 0.9 per cent and in hairdressing a whopping five per cent. The Reserve Bank also recently identified that the shortage of skilled workers is one of the most significant constraints on our economy and that that is putting pressure on inflation and upward pressure on interest rates.

In April this year Labor put out a discussion paper—to have a dialogue with business, unions and the community—called Labor’s training Australia partnership: getting the skilled migration balance right. We have invited submissions until the end of this month. It was put out by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and the shadow minister for immigration. You would have seen the reports recently and even heard in this place recently of the problems that are occurring with the skilled migration program. We are importing skilled migrants. We are turning young people away from our TAFEs. Somewhere in there, the balance is not right. Some 300,000 skilled migrants have been imported over the past 10 years, and over that time something like 270,000 young people have been turned away from our TAFE system. In 1996 the permanent skilled migration program intake was 27,500. In 2006 it is expected to reach at least 97,500. The government has increased the skilled migration program at the same time as it has, as I said, denied young Australians an opportunity to attend TAFE and start a trade. There are lots of options up for discussion in this discussion paper, and a few suggestions have been laid out.

The other issue is the temporary business long stay or 457 visas, which have since 1996 brought into Australia more than 330,000 temporary skilled workers. A recent report suggests that some guest workers who have come in under this visa have been exploited. Even yesterday in this place the Deputy Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister a question about the skilled migrant visa program. She asked whether or not it is operating effectively or properly and outlined the breaches and abuses of the 457 visa conditions, including at ABC Tissues in Sydney, T and R meats at Murray Bridge, Teys Bros meats at Naracoorte and Kilcoy meatworks in Queensland. She also referred to another case in Western Australia that has been referred to by Senator Vanstone. The member for Oxley yesterday asked a question about the Kilcoy meatworks and the 457 guest worker visas. I think the indication was that the company had put on the sponsorship application that people were going to be employed as slaughter workers, which requires quite considerable skill, but after they came here were employed as unskilled labourers. This was in a place where, as you can imagine, there are lots of young people and unskilled workers screaming out for a job.

The other options that we go to in our discussion paper are migrant apprentices and the trade skills training visa. This visa was introduced in November last year, when we knew we were going to have massive skill shortages and when we had lots of people crying out to get into an apprenticeship and get into some trade training. The trade skills training visas actually allow companies to import young people to train as apprentices rather than train young Australians as apprentices. If the government is really serious about the Australian technical colleges, and the benefits of them, then it must immediately move to abolish these trade skills training visas.

We know that there are many Australians out there willing and ready to work. Youth unemployment in Australia is over 20 per cent. In my region, it is over 30 per cent, and it has been for a long, long time. We want to work with business, unions and the community to make an investment in a skilled future for Australia. Kim Beazley, the Leader of the Opposition, put out a statement in September last year called ‘Australian skills blueprint’. It is a commitment that Labor in government have made to our young people, particularly those who are in years 9, 10, 11 and 12 who may not necessarily want to or be able to go to university. We have made a commitment to them that Labor in government would support them in the choice that they make for their future career and in their education.

In conclusion, Labor supports this bill. We hope the concerns that have been raised by many members on this side of the House are going to be addressed immediately by the government to ensure the successful operation of the Australian technical colleges. Those concerns have been detailed in the amendment to this bill moved by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. We have moved this amendment, but, at the end of the day, we support this bill. We support our young people, but we believe that much more needs to be done.

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