Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006 brings forward funding for the proposed 25 Australian technical colleges from 2008 and 2009 into 2006 and 2007. The total level of funding remains the same, and it also establishes a 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 funding.

This legislation is being debated today because, when the government introduced the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Bill 2005, it introduced flawed legislation. I do not know how many times I have stood up in this House and debated legislation that we have had to re-examine because the government failed the first time to get its legislation right. The one thing you can be certain of with the Howard government is that it will get things in quickly but it does not think about the consequences of them and we have to revisit them again.

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