Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity today to speak on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006. The bill will bring forward the funding for the proposed Australian technical colleges from 2008-09 to 2006-07. We are not opposing this bill, because we will support any move by this government to improve the skills base of our nation, but we really need to have a bit of think about just how serious the skills shortage is. The skills shortage crisis, which is what it is, is to be laid I believe fairly and squarely at the feet of the current federal government. They have had 10 years do something about this. They have been warned—there have been very evident signs coming forward along the pathway—and we are now in a position where we have a very dramatic skills shortage.

I am on the Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs which is looking at employment opportunities for our Indigenous people. We have had a lot of discussions in that inquiry with people from the mining industry, the tourism industry and a range of employers around this country. Everywhere we go, whilst we are talking specifically about Indigenous employment, the desperate levels of skills shortage in this country are inevitably brought to our attention. It is an inevitable part of any discussion anywhere when you are talking about employment levels and employment opportunities in Australia today. As I understand it, the government having announced that they would be bringing these technical colleges on stream, we are not going to see any graduates until the year 2010. I understand that is the prediction. It is a fairly slow way of doing something about the skills shortage.

We have major concerns about these technical colleges. When the bill was originally debated in June 2005 we raised concerns about the nature of the colleges. One of the main concerns is the duplication of resources the bill presents. Australia already has technical colleges, so why are we creating more which are based on a completely different system and funded by a different level of government? It becomes quite bureaucratic. Talk about levels of governance—that is exactly what is going to happen as a result of this decision.

The government announced that it would open 25 technical colleges across Australia. We are fairly critical of the government’s narrow scope in its approach to these colleges and its ability to implement its own policy. It is not looking good at this stage. I am not quite sure how long it is going to take for them to start falling into place. For example, 22 successful proposals have been announced but, of these, only 12 funding agreements have been signed, as I understand it. Only four technical colleges are open, with a total enrolment of fewer than 300 students, at Port Macquarie, Gladstone, Eastern Melbourne and the Gold Coast. Three other regions have not yet been announced—and the Howard government is threatening to take the promised technical colleges away from those regions. These include Queanbeyan—which I will come back to in a moment—Dubbo and Lismore-Ballina. It is not a very cohesive way of governing when you just say, ‘Okay, this is what we are going to do and if you don’t meet it we’ll rip it off and take it somewhere else.’ Just on what basis were the decisions made in relation to the establishment and location of these colleges?

As at 30 May this year $185 million had been committed to the Australian technical colleges but only $18 million had been spent. The total budget I believe is $343 million over five years. The Department of Education, Science and Training has refused to provide individual funding information for the colleges. It is all a bit of a mess, I believe very strongly. The Howard government’s Australian technical colleges policy makes the government’s agenda very clear on two main issues: industrial relations and education. All the staff employed by these Australian technical colleges must be offered Australian workplace agreements. That is a directive of the federal government. That is part of the deal.

This leads me to the problems facing the proposed technical college in Queanbeyan. My interest in Queanbeyan is because Queanbeyan, whilst just over the border out of the ACT, is part of my immediate region. I know that in most cases the planning and the co-location of many services, employment opportunities and business growth opportunities are regionally based here—a very good thing that we all applaud, even though sometimes it may be within the ACT or within New South Wales. In September 2004 the government announced it would open a technical college in Queanbeyan. We welcome that into the region if it is a way of improving the skills shortage. Tenders for the service provider closed in May 2005. I believe the government received two proposals for the Queanbeyan technical college, including one involving the New South Wales government. As I understand it, the federal government has rejected that New South Wales government proposal because the New South Wales government refuses to offer staff at that college Australian workplace agreements. It is interesting to look at the media reports surrounding this particular decision. I refer to an article in the Canberra Times of April this year:

... a Queanbeyan technical college is being held up by the NSW Government’s refusal to offer staff Australian Workplace Agreements ...

The article continued:

The minister was believed to have been favouring a bid from a consortium led by the Capital Region Business Enterprise Centre, based in Queanbeyan.

The bid, which included the NSW Department of Education, proposed converting one of Queanbeyan’s two public high schools into a college for Year 11 and 12 students.

But of course that is now all up for grabs because, unless there is an AWA commitment within the proposal, the minister has made it clear that he will withdraw the proposal.

The Queanbeyan mayor is not impressed. I know that the CEO of the Canberra Chamber of Commerce is far from impressed. People within Canberra, who are very aware of the skills shortage, are far from impressed. But the Minister for Vocational and Technical Education, Mr Hardgrave, has continually said that, if they do not meet this criterion, like all other criteria, the college will be scrapped. So much for any proper scientific or analytical consideration of where we need these colleges to be, reflective of skills shortages. If it is decided that this region needs one, then everything should be done to bring it in, if it is in fact going to assist in answering the skills shortage question.

In May this year the federal minister threatened to take away that Queanbeyan technical college unless there is a clear indication of support from somebody else within the region. I believe now that the Commonwealth is out there searching for an alternative provider for that Queanbeyan technical college. I can only assume that the other of the two original proposals was not satisfactory. So it seems that the Commonwealth has now rejected that original one purely on the basis of industrial relations. I cannot think of any other reason. There is no evidence before me to give me another opinion.

Like the rest of Australia, Canberra has a major skills shortage crisis and we need to reinvest in our skills base. Australia needs a more systematic approach to promote trades, science and technology education than I believe is being offered through this technical colleges process. Unlike the Howard government, we would work with the states and territories to implement these changes in secondary schooling for the benefit of all young Australians and not simply pick up our bat and ball, go out of the oval and play in a different field because we just want to do it that way.

Labor’s skills blueprint, released in September 2005, outlines our program for getting skills into our schools. We must offer young people better choices by teaching trades, technology and science in first-class facilities, establish a trades-in-schools scheme to double the number of school based apprenticeships in areas of skills shortage and provide extra funding per place, establish specialist schools for the senior years of schooling in areas such as trades, technology and science, and establish a trades taster program so that years 9 and 10 students can experience a range of trade options, which could also lead to pre-apprenticeship programs. Our priority on this side of the chamber is to train Australians first, to train them now and to very seriously address this crisis level of skills shortage.

As I said earlier on, I have had the privilege of speaking to a range of people not only within my own community but around the country in relation to employment opportunities. Overwhelmingly, from all sectors of the community, when you talk about employment they wring their hands and say, ‘We simply must be doing something quickly and seriously about the skills shortage. It should never have got to the level that it has.’

Whilst we are supporting this Australian technical colleges bill, purely because we have to do something, there are severe deficiencies within this process. As far as my region in Queanbeyan and the ACT is concerned, AWAs should not be coming into it. The establishment of a proper skills based training system and the requirements for that should be the basis upon which those decisions are made, not some ideological bent in relation to industrial relations.

See this speech in context