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

This legislation allocated insufficient funds to deliver the government’s 2004 election promise in a timely manner. The minister opposite said, ‘That’s not true.’ I can refer him to a number of examples of where we have had to revisit legislation because the government has got it wrong—a number of bills within his portfolio area that we have had to revisit on a number of occasions. A promise made in the heat of an election campaign with little thought and no planning is what this promise by the government to set up Australian technical colleges was. It was made on the spur of the moment. The minister at the time had a rush of blood to the head and thought, ‘Aha! Australian technical colleges—that sounds good. We’ll try and convince the people that we’ve got the answer to the skills shortages in Australia.’ It was an announcement that was designed to be a vote-grabber by the minister for education, who specialises in shooting from the hip. The Australian technical colleges proposal was vague and without substance. It was, supposedly, a plan to address the skills crisis in Australia.

The Australian Industry Group, a group that enjoys some favour with the government, has estimated that there is a skills shortage of around 100,000 in Australia. I think that is quite a conservative figure. The answer that the government came up with to address that shortage was to establish these Australian technical colleges. Interestingly, today only four out of 25 are operational, and the first tradesman will not be qualified until 2010. The government’s second approach to addressing the skills crisis is to bring workers in from overseas. In addition to bringing in skilled workers from overseas, they are bringing in apprentices.

In the electorate of Shortland that I represent in this parliament there are many young people who would like to train to be apprentices. Recently, I visited Delta Energy Systems with the Hunter Valley Training Company. They are responsible for training apprentices locally. I met with some of the young apprentices who are training there. They told me their story and how valuable and worth while the training was. The Hunter Valley Training Company told me that it was very competitive to obtain an apprenticeship through them. They had hundreds and thousands of young people applying for apprenticeships and they had to turn them away. Why? Because there are not enough places.

Instead of addressing that crisis, instead of making it easier and encouraging employers to train apprentices, the government have gone about duplicating a system that is already operating. We have had a very strong TAFE system in Australia but, under the government, I hate to say, it has been in decline. They have ripped funds out of the TAFE system. As the Leader of the Opposition mentioned earlier, under the government there has been a decline of eight per cent in spending on TAFE and higher education, compared to an increase of some 38 per cent in overseas nations. Interestingly, compared with other nations, the next worst-performing country actually increased its investment by six per cent in TAFE and universities.

The government are faced with a chronic skills shortage—a shortage that has the potential to undermine the operation of our economy. What have they done? They have ripped money out of the TAFE system and set up the Australian technical colleges system that will not see a trainee on the ground until 2010. I find it highly offensive, and the people whom I represent in this parliament are not too impressed with it either.

Labor have adopted a different position from that of the government. We will support their legislation and the building of these 25 technical colleges and the additional resources that will go into them, but we think there is a much better way than what the government have put forward. Labor’s Skills and Schools Blueprint highlighted a number of things that can be done that will make a real difference to education in Australia. As I have said, Australia urgently needs action to address our skills shortage. A skills shortage is a significant capacity constraint on Australia’s economy and the government’s proposal for 25 technical colleges is far too little, far too late. As I have said, the colleges will not produce tradesmen until 2010. This is at a time when we have this shortage of skilled workers—at the minimum, 100,000—and the government are adopting a very short-sighted approach.

When the government announced their proposal for Australian technical colleges, I think they were consumed with the election. They thought it sounded like a good idea. People in Australia were aware that we had this skills shortage. The government’s answer was to duplicate the system. It is not good enough. We really need a government, such as a Beazley Labor government, that would build an education system that teaches young people how to work, as well as how to study—a system that will prepare our young people for work and prepare Australia for the future, not a system that is based on duplication and that also lacks transparency and accountability. I will deal with that in a moment. As I have said, under the Howard government, Australia is the only country in the developed world to rip money out of universities and TAFE colleges. Australia needs a more systematic approach to promote trades, science and technology and education than the Howard government’s proposed 25 technical colleges. Labor’s Skills and Schools Blueprint that was released in 2005 outlines our program for getting skills into schools. I will touch on that in a moment.

The other aspect of this legislation that I find quite worrying is the fact that the government is mixing funding for the colleges with industrial relations. We all know that the government is full of zealots who have one thing in mind, and that is to undermine the workers in this country.

See this speech in context