Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill 2006. The training of our young people is a very important issue—certainly so in my electorate in Richmond, which has a very high teenage youth unemployment rate. Locals speak to me all the time about the lack of training for our young people and I support the amendments moved by the member for Jagajaga, which are as follows:

... the House condemns the Government for:

(1)

creating a skills crisis during their ten long years in office;

(2)

its continued failure to provide the necessary opportunities for Australians to get the training they need to get a decent job and meet the skills needs of the economy;

(3)

reducing the overall percentage of the Federal Budget spent on vocational education and training, and allowing this percentage of spending to further decline over the forward estimate period;

(4)

its incompetent handling of the Australian Technical Colleges initiative as evidenced by only four out of twenty five colleges being open for business, enrolling fewer than 300 students,

(5)

failing to be open and accountable about the operations of the Australian Technical Colleges, including details of extra student enrolments, funding levels for the individual colleges, course structures and programs.

(6)

denying local communities their promised Australian Technical College because of their ideological industrial relations requirements; and

(7)

failing to provide enough extra skills training so that Australia can meet the expected shortfall of 100,000 skilled workers by 2010”.

This bill brings forward the funding for the proposed Technical Colleges from 2008-09 to 2006-07. This is too little too late. Less than a handful of colleges have opened, each with a less than impressive enrolment. No tech colleges have opened in my electorate of Richmond, which has a very high level of teenage unemployment, and at this stage none have been promised. That is very disappointing, particularly for the regional areas, because we need to train our young people.

The Northern Rivers area of New South Wales is desperate for trade training. There is a massive shortage of local tradespersons such as carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers and electricians. The electorate of Richmond is directly affected by the skills shortage and it also has very high levels of teenage youth unemployment due to the government’s failure to train our local youth. Just south of the electorate of Richmond is the electorate of Page, in the Lismore-Ballina area. The electorate of Page was promised a technical college by the Prime Minister back in September 2004 but now, in August 2006, there is not even a preferred tenderer and the minister is threatening to scrap the idea altogether. Many young people around the Lismore-Ballina area desperately need that training. Hopefully many people from Richmond would also have access to it but, years and years later, there is still no word on a technical college there.

When the technical college for the Lismore-Ballina region was announced way back in 2004, the local schools, the TAFE and local businesses got together and came up with some really good local ideas that built on their own local expertise and knowledge. These proposals were put to the government back in May 2005 but, well over a year later, the locals in the Lismore and Ballina areas are still waiting for an announcement. The minister has rejected local proposals and threatened to take away the college.

One of the rejected proposals came from a local consortium that included the local high school and TAFE. Ballina High School won the 2004 National VET in Schools Excellence Award and the North Coast Institute of TAFE won the 2004 national Large Training Provider of the Year Award, but their proposal to run an Australian technical college was rejected by the Howard government. It was good to hear the news recently that the New South Wales government has stepped in and announced that Ballina High School will be funded under the state’s new trade school program, so we will see some additional trade training happening in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales. It is certainly good to see a commitment from the state government to step up to the mark, whereas the Howard government has left those people high and dry.

In this country we do indeed have a massive skills crisis. Quite simply, this skills crisis has been caused by the failure of the Howard government to train our youth. The government purport that the introduction of these technical colleges, along with importing foreign workers and apprentices, will address this issue. The Prime Minister has said that technical colleges are to be the centrepiece of our drive to tackle skills shortages, and now they want to bring that forward. If this is the best they have to offer, then it is far too little and far too late, particularly when I talk to locals in my electorate who desperately need to be trained now.

The young people in my electorate are facing a future of limited choice because of the Howard government’s refusal to address the skills crisis in this country right now. It has to be addressed right now so that these young people can have a future. The government should be focusing on training young Australians now. As I mentioned, we have one of the highest rates of regional unemployment in the electorate of Richmond, where unemployment generally is at 8.4 per cent and youth unemployment is at 32.8 per cent. That is almost a third of young people aged between 15 and 19 who are looking for full-time work but cannot get it. That is an outrageous figure, particularly in a regional area. That high figure has had impacts upon many locals that I have spoken to, particularly parents who are desperate for their kids to get decent training.

So we do have a skills crisis, but why aren’t our local youth being trained? It seems that the Prime Minister is not interested in decreasing this high youth unemployment rate in Richmond. He is not interested in training young Australians. What is he doing instead? He is importing apprentices from overseas. The skills shortage problem and one of the solutions—apprenticeships for Aussie kids—I believe is nowhere more important than in regional Australia, where we are seeing these high rates of youth unemployment.

This government cut $13.7 million from an incentive program to encourage rural and regional businesses to take on apprentices. Let’s just have a look at the current situation: this government is willing to spend millions to advertise and promote itself, as we constantly see. The government has spent millions of dollars trying to convince workers that they are better off having no rights at all. This is a government that will spend an absolute fortune on propaganda but nothing on real training for youth in regional areas such as Richmond. This arrogant, short-sighted government has continually ignored warnings from the Reserve Bank and many industry groups about the massive skills crisis in our country. It is our young people who are bearing the brunt of it and who are suffering. But the government is obsessed with spending money on propaganda and obsessed with all the infighting going on at the moment. We need to see a focus on getting our skills crisis fixed and giving our young people opportunities for the future by providing them with proper training.

There has not been the massive investment in education and training that is needed to ensure our kids’ future prosperity, indeed our nation’s future prosperity. The introduction of the technical colleges will not solve this crisis and will not benefit the 32.8 per cent of young people who are unemployed in the Richmond area.

For 10 long years the Howard government has failed to adequately fund our existing institutions. The government has turned away almost 300 Australians from TAFE and instead has been importing skilled workers. I do not have any opposition to migration, but I certainly say that migration is no substitute for training our young people. We should be training young Australians and training them now. That is where our focus and investment should be. We need to make an investment in our children in order to build a future for them and for our nation.

We on this side of the chamber say that we should be addressing the skills crisis through training our young people. Our education and training systems should be set up to support and prepare our young people to reach their full potential in their adult working lives. This government has systematically ripped funding and investment out of this system, making it harder for our kids to access the education and training they need to prepare them for the future. Under this government, Australia has had one of the largest declines in public investment in universities and TAFEs of any OECD country. That is a shameful record. We have dropped our investment by 8.7 per cent while the majority of our competitors have increased their investment. So it is no wonder that we are at the point where we have a serious shortage of skilled workers, which is really hurting Australian businesses who desperately need to have qualified tradespeople.

In its first two budgets the Howard government slashed $240 million from the vocational education and training sector and then froze funding until 2000, so is it any wonder that we are now faced with this massive skills shortage? These funding cuts and the subsequent freeze have meant that more and more TAFE colleges have had to close many of their training facilities.

The introduction of these tech colleges seems to be a bit of a parallel to, and they are certainly very much inferior to, the TAFE system. It really is a kick in the guts for TAFE, particularly in northern New South Wales. The funding for these tech colleges could indeed have been better spent by increasing funding to TAFEs—for example, in areas such as Wollongbar, Kingscliff and Murwillumbah in the Richmond electorate. That is where the money should have gone: into TAFEs.

I know that the member for Page agrees with me on this. He was reported in his local paper as commenting that the technical colleges should have been ditched in favour of putting desperately needed funding into the local Wollongbar TAFE. In the Northern Star of 18 October 2004 it was reported that the member for Page said: ‘I’m not into duplication. We need to talk carefully with the state government about this. I know the Prime Minister made the announcement but I think it came more out of frustration. We have a very good centre at Wollongbar.’ And we certainly have. We have a fantastic TAFE at Wollongbar, yet Wollongbar TAFE has been forced to turn away people from courses in construction, carpentry and joinery, and welding and metal fabrication. It could produce a lot more skilled tradespeople for our local area if it had more funding.

So investing in institutions and programs designed to give our young people the skills they need to get a job will address not only the skills crisis but also youth unemployment, and it will ensure our future prosperity as a nation. The sad truth is that, instead of investing in education and training, the Prime Minister has denied some regional areas a tech college through their draconian insistence that all staff be on unfair AWAs. Ballina High School was rejected for a tech college because it did not want to be tied to the Howard government’s extreme industrial relations requirements. This government is insisting on mixing up industrial relations conditions with the delivery of training. At the government’s insistence, all staff employed at an Australian technical college must be offered an individual contract. If a local school or TAFE does not want to implement the government’s extreme industrial relations agenda, it just gets cut off from the technical college program.

The government is denying local youth training and skills because it does not want the teachers at these colleges to have any rights at work. The introduction of these technical colleges will not solve the skills crisis. The government has had 10 long years to address the problem, but it has failed to do so. The wide-reaching damage caused by the government’s failure to address this is indeed outstanding.

Tourism is an important industry in my electorate. Currently in the tourism industry there is a shortage of 7,000 positions and a forecast of an additional deficit of up to 15,000 people a year. A lack of trained workers represents a long-term threat to the tourism industry in Australia and a very real and present threat to local businesses in Richmond. Technical colleges will not fix this or other shortages. These colleges do nothing to address the immediate problem. There will be no additional tradespeople for years. Businesses will have to wait a long time to see a result. But we need to see action on the skills crisis now. Again, this legislation is all too little too late. That is why I support the amendments.

It is disappointing to see the very limited number of members on the government’s side of the House this evening speaking on the legislation. I think it is a mark of how little this government cares about training our youth and about developing real solutions to the skills crisis. We on this side of the House believe that technical colleges duplicate programs and infrastructure that already exist in our TAFEs and schools. We should invest in what is already in place and working. We should be building on what we have, rather than reinventing the wheel.

Federal Labor are serious about education and have a vision for our future. We need to compete with developing economies overseas by addressing our skills crisis and building the skills of Australian workers. Labor are designing strong, practical measures to ensure our kids have affordable education and training choices by providing free TAFE for traditional apprenticeships, creating more real additional apprenticeships, providing more incentives to train apprentices in areas of skills shortages and offering young people better choices by teaching trades, technology and science in first-class facilities.

We will establish a trades in schools scheme to double the number of school based apprenticeships and provide extra funding per place. We will establish specialist schools for the senior years of schooling in such areas as trades, technology and science. We will establish a trades program so that year 9 and 10 students can experience a range of trade options that can lead to pre-apprenticeship programs. We will introduce an $800 per year skills account, which would abolish up-front TAFE fees for traditional trades, so that many more people can access training. We will also give a $2,000 trade completion bonus to those undertaking traditional trades. Investing in institutions and programs designed to give our young people the skills they need to get a job addresses not only the skills crisis but also youth unemployment and it ensures our future prosperity as a nation.

I again focus on tourism and on how important this is in the federal electorate of Richmond. Indeed, tourism is one of its major industries. The National Tourism Investment Strategy identified the need for 130,000 workers over the next decade with its current share of employment growth. Tourism would secure 45,000 workers. A lack of trained workers represents a long-term threat to the tourism industry in Australia. It also represents a very real and present threat, as does the Howard government’s extreme industrial relations changes, to many local businesses in Richmond.

When you look at areas like Richmond, you see that tourism is one of its major industries. If we are going to see people right across Australia trading off their annual leave every year, how is that going to impact on our local industries and the number of people coming to our areas? There is great difficulty in getting people who are trained in tourism, so we certainly need to address that as a major issue. In an area like the electorate of Richmond, which has such a large tourism industry, it is certainly important to make sure that many young people are trained in tourism.

In conclusion, the regional area of the Northern Rivers of New South Wales in the federal electorate of Richmond has, as I said, a rate of 32.8 per cent teenage unemployment. It is an absolutely shameful record for this government that regional areas have a rate of youth unemployment like that. The fact that the government has failed to invest in training in this area is outrageous. As I explained, local areas like Ballina and Lismore have been waiting many years for their technical college, but they do not see any sign of one. Where does that leave the young people in those areas now? What are they going to do? How much longer is the government going to delay this? Many of the people in the electorate of Richmond might be able to access a technical college, but so far all we have seen is the government dragging its feet on the establishment of some sort of technical college in either Lismore or Ballina.

It shows just how out of touch and arrogant this government is. People tell me all the time that they have been forgotten by the Howard government. Local seniors, local families and local young people are telling me that. They are disillusioned and angry with the Howard government for not investing funding in providing a future for them. What does it say about us as a nation that we are not providing training for our young people, that we are not putting in funding for it?

It is a shameful record of the Howard government. They are just too obsessed with their in-fighting, which we are constantly hearing about, to focus on the major issues impacting on our nation—and one of those is the skills crisis. Again, businesses are telling me how difficult it is to get local tradespeople and how hard it is to find them. This has impacted even more in those regional areas. That, coupled with the fact that we are not providing kids with a future, is absolutely shameful. It is shameful of the Howard government that they are forgetting about these young people. They are leaving them behind. We are looking at 32.8 per cent—more than one in three—of young people unemployed. That is just a huge number. (Time expired).

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