Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

They do not. The member for Throsby is simply wrong. She is embarrassed by the fact that she said she would never get the Australian Technical College—Illawarra. Of course, we were there. She was not, but we were there with community members last Thursday. There is $19.6 million going into the electorate of Throsby, the electorate of Cunningham and all around the Illawarra.

But let me go on to the substance of this debate rather than discuss the nonsense of those opposite. The bill provides for flexibility in the management of the appropriation by introducing a regulation-making power which allows funding appropriated for a particular calendar year to be carried over to a future year or to be brought forward to an earlier year. There is no change to the $346.3 million funding allocated for the establishment of these technical colleges up to the end of the year 2009.

Since the ATC policy was announced, our achievements in establishing these colleges have exceeded all expectations—certainly the expectations of those opposite. Twenty-two of the 25 colleges have been announced. Funding agreements for 16 of these colleges are now in place. Five Australian technical colleges are now operational. Given that the opposition was instrumental in delaying the passage of the original legislation appropriating the funding until late October 2005, this is an outstanding achievement—that these colleges have been able to operate this year given the time that was available. At least 20 of the 25 colleges are expected to be operational in 2007, with approximately 2,000 Australian school based apprentices in those colleges. The remainder will be operational in 2008. This is entirely in accord with our stated intention—the time frames for the establishment of Australian technical colleges and also that 7,500 Australian school based apprentices would attend these 25 ATCs each year when fully operational.

The member for Jagajaga needs to understand that it was her party, the Australian Labor Party, which delayed the original bill by having it referred to a Senate committee—thereby delaying the passage of the original legislation by over three months, restricting the ability of the government to provide industry and community consortiums with funding and the opportunity to establish an Australian technical college in 2006. Media reports attributed to the current Deputy Leader of the Opposition in early May and on ABC radio on 10 May suggested that she suggested that the Australian technical colleges were in disarray. Of course, that was totally false. Let me make it quite clear for those opposite—

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